Musk’s feud continues: Twitter slows down websites that the boss doesn’t like

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Elon Musk’s guerrilla war continues: Twitter slows down websites that the boss doesn’t like

Since taking over the short message service Twitter, Elon Musk has been trying to sell it as a major platform for freedom of expression. But for a while that didn’t necessarily apply to sites with which the boss was currently arguing. For a short time, these were only opened with a delay.

It has been the big mantra since the takeover of the short message service Twitter, recently known as X: The service should become the global marketplace for opinions, unlike its competitors, opinion expressions will not be restricted there, the new owner announced Elon Musk again and again. Now it has been discovered: Some pages were only accessed by X with a delay. And only those that Musk just had trouble with.

Specifically, it is about pages that are linked in X-Posts. Links leading to newspapers such as the New York Times, competitors such as Facebook and a few other sites did not open immediately, but only after a delay of almost five seconds. This was first discovered by users of the hacker forum “Hacker News”. The procedure has been observed at least since August 4th. The “Washington Post” also discovered a number of pages affected by the delay. They all have one thing in common: they have recently been attacked by name by X owner Elon Musk.

Musk’s opponents in sight

Accordingly, numerous news sites such as “CNN”, the news agency “Reuters”, but also competitors such as Facebook, Instagram and Bluesky were affected. All of them had Musk publicly upset about recently. Other sites such as the “Washington Post” itself, “Fox News” and even some competitors such as Mastodon or YouTube were therefore not affected by the measurable delays. Since X no longer runs a press department, requests for comments remain unanswered. Elon Musk has not responded to inquiries either.

It is rather unlikely that this is an error. The delay was measured by several members of Hacker News. It only affects sites that had been attacked by Musk. On August 4, when the ban on The Times was first observed, Musk attacked it for an article about apartheid in his home country of South Africa, and even called for the subscriptions to be canceled. Another strong indication: only a short time after the first articles about the delay appeared, it suddenly disappeared. “I think X switched off the delay with the reporting,” wonders one of the “Hacker News” users. “I used to be able to reproduce them over and over again, now I can’t.”

delay with consequences

Even if five seconds of loading time doesn’t sound like much, the effect is definitely noticeable. If all other pages open almost instantaneously, every wait seems like a waste of time or an error. A Google study had already found out in 2016 that Internet users simply close websites again if they take more than three seconds to load. For years, websites and news media have been optimizing the loading time to prevent this. The delay now observed at X may well have cost the affected pages a few visits.

Technically, it is based on the TinyURL link shortening service operated by X. If you post a link to the short message service, it is automatically reduced to a few characters. If you click on the short link, it still takes you to your destination in normal operation without any noticeable delay.

“worrying”

The error had already been discovered by those affected. “We’ve already made similar observations,” a Times spokesman told the Washington Post. “While we don’t know the rationale behind the implementation, a targeted build-up of pressure on the news media would be worrying.” The blog page “Substack”, which was also affected, also commented in this direction. “We created ‘Substack’ specifically in response to such manipulations by social media companies,” the founders said in a statement to the newspaper.

Musk’s crackdown on uncomfortable news media and competitors isn’t a new development. Under the self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist,” mainstream media outlets had their verification revoked and an account that tracked his private jet’s publicly viewable flights was suspended. Competitive sites such as Mastodon were marked as “unsafe” and anyone linking to them on their profile could be blocked. The opposite happened with media and users who were politically interested in Musk: Countless formerly blocked accounts from the right-wing spectrum were unblocked under Musk. Musk even offered the ousted “Fox News” moderator Tucker Carlson a whole new stage. His show is now exclusively on X.

Sources: Washington Post, hacker news, Google study