To say this newsletter has gone through some difficulty over the last year would be an understatement. The combined frustration of moving from a website to Substack while trying to maintain an email list of interested readers is no easy task. No matter the newsletter. But those decisions are made all the more difficult by Elon Musk's unending moral and intellectual bankruptcy.
For those unfamiliar with my frustrations with Musk, my problems with him began in October of last year when he purchased Twitter, unleashing a torrent of extremism and violent rhetoric.1 The increased vitriol that quickly polluted Twitter made my views of Musk already negative, but it became increasingly clear that Musk was unwilling to act neutrally with his blatant far-right partisanship.
In November 2022, Musk, Twitter's CEO and de facto ruler, publicly encouraged users to support Republicans in the Midterm Elections. That decision further established that Musk leaned towards the GOP and would not bother with a pretense of neutrality on a major social media platform.
As I explained at the time:
Tweeting out to millions of followers, with the full recognition that Musk controls the platform, is a sign that the CEO is not only willing to use Twitter as his personal political weapon but also serves as a reminder about how dangerous unrestrained social media leadership can be.
Whereas previous social media debacles on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram have called into question how serious social media companies are about moderating their platform, the destruction of those moderation teams is not a solution, as I noted before. We are witnessing a perfect example of grifting, faux libertarian advocacy, and an overt appeal to partisanship for the sake of Elon’s frothing fans. Such negligence on a site that houses millions of people’s viewpoints, perspectives, and in the case of freelance writers, careers is an affront to the dignity of every single person who has to endure it.2
Those overt appeals to the right Musk further galvanized the right to use Twitter as their plaything while pretending to be overtaking a censorious media that has no values, that the right would bring back freedom for all.
But Musk’s conduct, including smearing a former employee who criticized him as a pedophile, revealed another more feckless side to his faux persona.3
Rather than establishing an open platform for all people, Musk instead seeks to create a platform that he can use to profit from while simultaneously making it a reflection of his corrupt and reactionary politics, free from any serious challenges to his control.
This was on perfect display when Musk decided to restrict API usage through paywalls, putting companies like Wordpress in a bind for some of the features they provided to their users. At the time, I was one of those users and depended upon that site to promote my newsletter, which I complained about as it seriously risked my work. 4
To be clear, I am not under any delusion that Musk targeted my work. I am a small fish in an ocean of content creators and writers, but what was frustrating to me and many others who were affected by the API usage is that it forced writers to make decisions about the best place to put their content while also risking significant losses.
While some can recover as they have already established newsletters and public records, I was not so lucky. By February of this year, I was forced to move my newsletter to Substack and brought some of my following with me.5
That move, I hoped, would allow me a chance to build something for cheap while also working on my graduate degree, saving me money and avoiding restrictions imposed by Musk. That was not the case.
By April, Musk decided to impose his wrath on Substack, restricting links to the site and preventing Substack writers from embedding tweets in their posts. He further put out an alert that listed Substack as unsafe, which was not true. 6 Eventually, the false alerts would be removed, but the threat was clear; Substack’s competition with Twitter was not being tolerated.
Even now, Substack writers still struggle to promote their articles and work, with even well-established writers raging against blatant censorship. Emily Atkins of the Climate-focused newsletter Heated noted that Musk was demonstrating just how little Musk actually cared about Climate Change activism.
Musk’s new policy will, of course, harm more than just climate-focused publications and readers. But its stifling effect on climate information is worth highlighting on its own, given the media’s love of portraying Musk as a climate champion. We tried to throw some cold water on that portrayal back in the early days of Musk’s Twitter takeover, noting that his public advocacy for a Republican government would undo any climate gains made by his electric vehicle and clean energy company, Tesla.
In the months since then, the climate case against Musk has only gotten stronger, as he’s continued to dismantle the site that researchers have demonstrated is an essential tool for studying, fighting, and responding in real time to climate change. For what it’s worth, Musk also recently mocked the Biden administration for daring to tweet about climate change during the Silicon Valley Bank meltdown. Multitasking: the horror!7
The restrictions, which largely remain on links, have hampered writers trying to build something of their own in a world of ravenous corporate media moguls.
And while this newsletter has seen some improvement, and I plan to continue working on it, the fact that Musk’s restrictions remain is just another example of how hypocritical and blatantly opportunistic he is. Musk, a self-styled free-speech warrior, is anything but interested in a diversified media environment.
His is a moderation of convenience. If he thinks he can appeal to the right to achieve a desired outcome for himself. If he thinks he can get away with suppressing a competitor’s site, even though the site is largely for writing newsletters, he will do that as well. What Elon Musk does is for Musk and Musk alone. He is not some principled visionary of freedom and independence. He’s just another haphazard billionaire with a God complex.
Conor Kelly, “Elon Musk Owns Twitter, and All Hell Is Breaking Loose,” Progressive American (blog), October 29, 2022, https://progressiveamerican322183019.wordpress.com/2022/10/29/elon-musk-owns-twitter-and-all-hell-is-breaking-loose/.
Conor Kelly, “Elon Musk’s Cowardly Endorsement of the Republican Party,” Progressive American (blog), November 8, 2022, https://progressiveamerican322183019.wordpress.com/2022/11/07/elon-musks-cowardly-endorsement-of-the-republican-party/.
Conor Kelly, “Elon Musk Smears Former Twitter Employee with Pedophilia Accusations,” Progressive American (blog), December 13, 2022, https://progressiveamerican322183019.wordpress.com/2022/12/12/elon-musk-smears-former-twitter-employee-with-pedophilia-accusations/.
Conor Kelly, “Urgent Newsletter Update,” Progressive American (blog), February 11, 2023, https://progressiveamerican322183019.wordpress.com/2023/02/10/urgent-newsletter-update/.
Conor Kelly, “The Progressive American Is Moving to Substack,” Progressive American (blog), February 13, 2023, https://progressiveamerican322183019.wordpress.com/2023/02/13/the-progressive-american-is-moving-to-substack/.
Conor Kelly, “Elon Musk Keeps Screwing Freelance Writers,” Substack newsletter, The Progressive American (blog), April 7, 2023, https://progressiveamerican.substack.com/p/elon-musk-keeps-screwing-freelance.
Emily Atkin, “Elon Musk’s Climate Censorship,” Heated (blog), July 12, 2021,
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