X throttles Facebook, news sites criticized by Elon Musk: report
X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, has reportedly slowed the speed at which users can access links to competitors and news sites that owner Elon Musk has criticized.
Users who clicked on links to articles from the New York Times, Facebook and other news outlets and competitors had to wait around five seconds for the page to appear to an analysis of the Washington Post.
According to the report, links leading to pages hosted by Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, Substack, and Reuters were also throttled.
The delay was felt by users hitting the t.co domain, a link shortening service that X uses.
Throttling websites and delaying access could discourage users, impacting traffic numbers and dampening ad revenue.
By late Tuesday afternoon, X appeared to have eliminated the delay. When Reuters reached out to him for comment, X confirmed the delay had been lifted but did not elaborate.
The post asked X for a comment.
A user of Hacker News, a technology forum, reported the delay Tuesday, writing that X began delaying links to the New York Times on August 4.
On that day, Musk, who described himself as a “free speech absolutist” and acquired Twitter to scrap its previously strict content moderation policy and allow near-unrestricted expression, criticized the publication’s coverage of South Africa, accusing it of to do so supporting calls for genocide.
Musk also referred to the Times as “propaganda” and the “Twitter equivalent of diarrhea.”
Facebook and Instagram are owned by Meta Platforms Inc, the technology conglomerate led by CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg and Musk teased each other over a mixed martial arts cage fight the two men agreed on earlier this year.
Both men blame the other for postponing the fight.
Zuckerberg has also attempted to break into the microblogging space by developing a new “Twitter Killer” app, Threads, which initially exploded in signups upon its launch, but has since waned in popularity.
Bluesky is another X-like app founded by Twitter pioneer Jack Dorsey – the tech mogul who publicly endorsed Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of his original idea and remains on X’s board of directors.
Dorsey has been critical of Musk’s leadership of X for the past few weeks.
Substack, the newsletter subscription service funded by venture capital giants like Andreessen Horowitz, was embroiled in a feud with Musk earlier this year after X began suppressing links to Substack on its platform.
X blocked links to Substack after the company launched a new feature, Notes, a short content platform that operated similarly to Musk’s company and was therefore perceived as a threat.
The falling out with Substack resulted in Matt Taibbi, an ally of Musk who worked with the mogul on The Twitter Files, dumping X.
Taibbi, a former Rolling Stone journalist, hosts a lucrative newsletter on Substack.
A spokesman for The New York Times said it received no explanation from X about the connection delay.
“While we do not know the rationale behind the application of this time delay, we would be concerned about the targeted pressure being exerted on news organizations for reasons that are unclear,” the spokesman told Reuters on Tuesday.
Substack co-founders Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie and Jairaj Sethi released a joint statement to The Washington Post, which said, “Substack was founded in direct response to this behavior by social media companies.”
“Authors cannot build sustainable businesses when their connection to their audiences depends on unreliable platforms that have proven they are willing to make changes hostile to the people who use them,” the statement said.
A Reuters spokesman said: “We are aware of the Washington Post’s report of a delay in publishing links to Reuters articles on X. We are investigating the matter.”
Bluesky did not respond to a request for comment.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
With post wires
