Elon Musk Tried To Buy Substack

Substack CEO said NO

Elon Musk tried to buy Substack.

Amazing. From the Times today.

Had Musk succeeded all of us who deviate from standard rightwing views would surely have been banned. That most definitely includes those of us who criticize the one nation who must never ever be criticized. Scary.

And the threat has been no means diminished. The fascists are at the gate. Actually they are inside. Bravo, SUBSTACK, for defending us all and our Constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech.

EXCERPTS from NY Times today. LINK.

Substack’s Great, Big, Messy Political Experiment

The newsletter start-up, which once drew an overture from Elon Musk, is betting on politics content and recruiting stars. But profits remain elusive.By Jessica Testa and Benjamin Mullin

Nov. 18, 2024, 3:00 a.m. ET

In April 2023, the newsletter platform Substack received an unexpected proposal from Elon Musk, who had recently purchased Twitter.

Mr. Musk put it plainly: He wanted to buy Substack. At the time, he was trying to supercharge paid subscriptions on the social network, now called X, which had long fashioned itself as a “global town square” for political news and debate. Paid subscriptions are the core of Substack’s business.

He floated the acquisition on a call with Chris Best, chief executive of Substack, suggesting that Mr. Best could serve as chief executive of the combined company, according to three people familiar with the conversation.

Mr. Best declined to entertain the proposal, and the short-lived discussion ended, the people said. But in the aftermath, Substack crystallized a new mission: luring politics obsessives away from social networks like X….

The platform has little problem recruiting stars — whose content helped Substack become more central to election discourse, and who earned millions of dollars in subscription revenue for their efforts.

Top publishers include Nate Silver, the polling guru, who raked in new subscribers even as he doubled prices going into election season; Mehdi Hasan, the progressive broadcaster, who founded his own media company after MSNBC canceled his show, then rocketed up Substack’s charts; and The Bulwark, a collective for center-right commentary whose publisher interviewed Vice President Kamala Harris and former Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming onstage at a Harris campaign stop in October….

Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.