Watching The Usual Suspects react to the news that billionaire Elon Musk has become the largest shareholder in Twitter has been a source of great amusement for many right-wing Twitter users who have long been frustrated with the social media platform’s one-sided suppression policies when it comes to conservatives and right-leaning news sources.
But perhaps no reactions have been more amusing than those of the Twitter employees who made it be known Monday that they were panicking big time. As my colleague Brandon Morse reported, some said they were concerned about “company culture” while others clearly had cases of the sads (one employee posted a photo of a crying woman, while another tweeted that she was glad she was on vacation).
Substack, a popular newsletter publishing platform for independent journalists and whose policies promote an atmosphere of tolerance for differing opinions (unlike at YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook), apparently got wind of the complaints from the disgruntled Twitter employees. Lulu Cheng Meservey, the company’s VP of comms, took the to Twitter machine directly in response to post a reminder that they were hiring.
In the process, she let people know Substack was absolutely not interested in any Twitter employee who might want to defect over concerns about the possibility Musk won’t be heavy-handed when it comes to limiting speech:
Well played, Substack. Well played.
Substack has previously come under attack from the likes of leftists like Chelsea Clinton over their refusal to punish users for posting alternative theories about the origins of the coronavirus as well as for raising questions about vaccines and vaccine mandates.
Some of the more well-known public figures that have pushed back hard against Big Tech/media censorship and who use Substack to get their messages out to their subscribers (which probably number in the hundreds of thousands) are Intercept founder turned independent journalist Glenn Greenwald, former New York Times opinion page editor Bari Weiss, Rolling Stone contributing editor Matt Taibbi, who mostly publishes at Substack now instead of Rolling Stone, and Andrew Sullivan.
As for Musk, in addition to the news about him spending billions to purchase a majority of shares, it was announced Tuesday that he was now on Twitter’s board of directors. Twitter’s co-founder Jack Dorsey and its CEO Parag Agrawal were “really happy” and “excited” to share the news:
No word yet on whether Twitter has added fainting couches and crying rooms to their facilities in light of this latest development, but we’ll keep you posted.
Stay tuned!
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