X, previously known as Twitter, has undergone many changes since Musk took over. These changes alterations to the platform’s name and the company’s logo. Despite claims from the new CEO, Linda Yaccarino, that the company is approaching a breakeven point, it’s undeniable that the past few months have been marked by significant upheaval within the company. X has found itself enmeshed in several controversies, with the most recent one arguably being the most severe.
According to a report from the Washington Post, X is allegedly deliberately slowing down traffic to websites that Musk personally dislikes. Affected websites reportedly include the New York Times, Reuters, Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and Substack. These are the websites that have been discriminated by Musk in the past. As per the report, users who click on links to these websites on X are facing a 5 second delay before being directed to the website.
The throttling is being done through X’s t.co domain, a link-shortening service that is used to process every link posted on Twitter. Traffic is routed through the domain, allowing X to track or throttle activity to the target website.
“Links shared on Twitter, including links shared in Direct Messages, will automatically be processed and shortened to an http://t.co link,” X mentions on its help center page adding that “anyone with a t.co shortened link will be able to navigate to the destination URL.”
The throttling issue was first highlighted on Tuesday by a user on Hacker News discussion forum. Users noticed a delay while accessing New York Times links. After this news was published by The Washington Post, X appears to now be dropping the delay time for NYT and Reuters. However, it is unknown if the issue has been resolved for the other websites.
The Washington Post’s report also found that the throttling was not evenly applied. Links to websites such as Fox News and Mastodon were not affected.
Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, wrote on Bluesky that the delays appeared to be “one of those things that seems too crazy to be true, even for Twitter” adding that “delays are annoying enough, even subconsciously, to drive people away.”
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