X, the social media platform formerly referred to as Twitter, has been slowing the speeds with which users can access links to rivals and news sites which have come under criticism from owner Elon Musk, in keeping with a report.
Users who click into links to stories from the Recent York Times, Facebook, and other news outlets and competitors were forced to attend around five seconds before the page appeared, according to an evaluation conducted by The Washington Post.
Links that result in pages hosted by Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, Substack, and Reuters were also throttled, in keeping with the report.
The delay was felt by users who clinked into the t.co domain, which is a link-shortening service that X uses.
Throttling web sites and delaying access could turn off users, thus affecting traffic figures and dampening ad revenue.
By late Tuesday afternoon, X appeared to have eliminated the delay. When contacted for comment by Reuters, X confirmed the delay was removed but didn’t elaborate.
The Post has sought comment from X.
A user on Hacker News, a tech forum, posted in regards to the delay earlier on Tuesday and wrote that X began delaying links to the Recent York Times on Aug. 4.
On that day, Musk, who billed himself as a “free speech absolutist” who acquired Twitter to be able to put off its previously stringent content moderation policies in order to permit nearly unfettered expression, criticized the publication’s coverage of South Africa and accused it of supporting calls for genocide.
Musk has also referred to the Times as “propaganda” and the “Twitter equivalent of diarrhea.”
Facebook and Instagram are properties of Meta Platforms Inc, the tech conglomerate run by CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg and Musk have been needling one another over a mixed martial arts cage match that the 2 men agreed to earlier this yr.
Each men blame the opposite for the fight being postpone.
Zuckerberg has also sought to encroach into the micro-blogging space by making a latest “Twitter killer” app, Threads, which initially saw an explosion of sign-ups after its rollout but whose popularity has since waned.
Bluesky is one other X-like app that was founded by Twitter pioneer Jack Dorsey — the tech mogul who publicly endorsed Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of his original brainchild and who stays on the board of X.
Dorsey in recent weeks has expressed criticism of Musk’s stewardship of X.
Substack, the newsletter subscription service funded by enterprise capital giants including Andreessen Horowitz, was embroiled in a feud with Musk earlier this yr after X began suppressing links to Substack on its platform.
X blocked links to Substack after it rolled out a latest feature, Notes, a short-form content platform that operated similarly to Musk’s outfit and was thus perceived as a threat.
The dust-up with Substack led to Matt Taibbi, a Musk ally who collaborated with the mogul on “The Twitter Files,” ditching X.
Taibbi, a former Rolling Stone journalist, hosts a lucrative newsletter on Substack.
A spokesperson for the Recent York Times said it has not received a proof from X in regards to the link delay.
“While we don’t know the rationale behind the applying of this time delay, we could be concerned by targeted pressure applied to any news organization for unclear reasons,” the spokesperson told Reuters on Tuesday.
Substack’s co-founders Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie, and Jairaj Sethi released a joint statement to The Washington Post which read: “Substack was created in direct response to this sort of behavior by social media firms.”
“Writers cannot construct sustainable businesses if their connection to their audience is determined by unreliable platforms which have proven they’re willing to make changes which are hostile to the individuals who use them,” the statement read.
A Reuters spokesperson said: “We’re aware of the report within the Washington Post of a delay in opening links to Reuters stories on X. We’re looking into the matter.”
Bluesky didn’t reply to a request for comment.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
With Post Wires