‘Twitter Files’ journalist who left platform after falling out with Musk resurfaces on Trump’s Truth Social

Matt Taibbi, the former Rolling Stone journalist-turned-Elon Musk confidant who left recently left Twitter, has found a new social media platform of choice: Truth Social.

The trouble between Taibbi and Mr Musk seemingly started when Substack, the publishing platform used by Taibbi and a host of other prominent independent journalists, unveiled a new Twitter-like service called Substack Notes.

The unveiling of Substack Notes rankled Mr Musk, who called it a Twitter “clone” and announced a series of retributive measures — including disabling links to Substack content posted on Twitter.

That presented a serious issue for Taibbi and other journalists who rely on Substack for readership and subscriber income, and quickly led to Taibbi announcing in a Substack post that he’d be leaving Twitter.

“I’m staying at Substack,” Taibbi wrote last Friday. “You’ve all been great to me, as has the management of this company. Beginning early next week I’ll be using the new Substack Notes feature (to which you’ll all have access) instead of Twitter, a decision that apparently will come with a price as far as any future Twitter Files reports are concerned. It was absolutely worth it and I’ll always be grateful to those who gave me the chance to work on that story, but man is this a crazy planet.”

As it turns out, however, Substack Notes is not the only social media platform Taibbi is now using.

He also posted on the right-wing, Donald Trump-aligned Truth Social on Wednesday for the first time since October of last year — sharing a link to an article titled: “Meet the Censored: Me?”

In another Truth Social post this week, Taibbi again linked his article and also quoted from it: “More #TwitterFiles reports are coming. Holding up my end of the deal, these will appear on Twitter first. They just won’t be on my account, since I wouldn’t wipe my ass with Twitter after the events of last week.”

As of Thursday afternoon, Taibbi has not yet uploaded any Twitter Files content to Truth Social. Taibbi’s falling out with Mr Musk and Twitter comes after months of criticism of his journalistic practices regarding the publication of the Twitter Files and his method of reporting them.

Last week, Mehdi Hasan called out several apparent errors of Taibbi’s in a live interview on MSNBC.

“I mean this sincerely: I’ve got nothing against Elon Musk,” Taibbi wrote in his latest Substack post. “Thanks to him and the #TwitterFiles, ordinary people know a lot more than they ever could have hoped to about how information is managed in this country. I’ll personally always feel grateful for what he did. But he’s high as Snoop in a weather balloon if he thinks banning commercial rivals is going to solve Twitter’s problems. The whole thing’s really a shame.”