Elon Musk Admits X is Throttling Links — Effectively Limiting People From Reading News
Elon Musk Admits X is Throttling Links — Effectively Limiting People From Reading News
Musk confirmed that posts containing links are deprioritized, renewing criticism that the platform is restricting access to external sources of information.
Summary
Elon Musk confirmed that X (formerly Twitter) deprioritizes posts containing links, encouraging users to post links in replies instead.
This practice, aimed at keeping users on the platform, has drawn criticism for restricting access to external information and harming media outlets’ traffic.
Past reports revealed X also delayed links to rival platforms and news outlets, prompting concerns about press freedom and revenue impacts.
The Guardian recently left X, labeling it “toxic,” while other media and free speech advocates accuse the platform of enabling disinformation and controlling narratives.
Anyone still looking for news on Twitter at this point is actively seeking to be misinformed.
Not specifically for this news, it's been obvious for a while now.
Interesting. One of the primary defenses against attempts to hold platform operators liable for the content on their platform is that they operate like common carriers (e.g. telephone companies), in that they don't curate content, or any curation is the byproduct of algorithmic engines (e.g. you see posts that are currently popular).
They have simultaneously argued that they shouldn't be regulated like common carriers because that would be harmful to the public and not appropriate for... reasons, I suppose.
This admission contradicts the first point and drives home the need for net neutrality like regulations for platforms. Not only are they interfering with the free flow of information, contrary to their whole "freedom of speech for all" branding, they are admitting that it is for purely business reasons (as opposed to moderating community standards or hate speech, which they have resisted and labeled censorship).
Fwiw, net neutrality is "law" right now. I wonder if affected media companies have a tort that they could sue Twitter under.
I'm sure Twitter is going to delay delay delay but still...
Ninja edit: law is in quotes since this is an FCC ruling (I don't know if that's the right word) and not sure how stable that is with Chevron overturned.
I thought that only applies to ISPs and not to platforms (Twitter, FB, Threads, etc)
Even if Chevron hadn't been overturned, it would have been as stable as it was before: able to be reversed by a Republican head of the FCC, just like it was last time.
When Facebook and IG switched to their algorithm instead of showing newest first I made this case and nobody would listen to me.
They’re having their cake and eating it too (and trafficking everyone’s data unregulated). Just like when EU members using a US VPN get violations of the GDPR.
Aside: I went to a site today and had my VPN set to an EU country and when I picked “reject advertising cookies” it said this page isn’t available in areas governed by the GDPR or whatever that law is. They’re censoring themselves from places that don’t let them steal data.
If you're still on X, you deserve whatever you've got coming to you.
I am going to ask the rhetorical question. Why the fuck are people still on xitter ?But then again the same question would be why vote Trump ? People are just unfortunately stupid.
I have a ... well - for the time being still friend - who is radicalizing himself since the pandemic and it appears it's 95% due to shitter. I fill people beyond a certain point remain there because it's like an addiction to their damaged brains :/
It's like with cults - it's a source of affirmation that their opinions and emotions are the right ones. It pairs really well with fascism because the fascists give you somebody to blame, and then the Twitter cult content farm tells you that you're righteous in your hatred.
And that's also why it's so hard to break people away from it. To break away, they'd have to recognize and admit that they're wrong, that everything they've done up to that point hasn't been justified, and that they'll have to face the consequences of what they've done ("are we the baddies?"). After a certain point, the sunk cost fallacy sets in, and people will double down on the cult rather than admit that they were wrong, even when they know it.
Anti-competitive, anti-net-neutral, unethical bullshit from a man for which none of that is surprising. And an incoming FCC chair who will abide, allow and even encourage this sort of thing despite it actively making the net worse for consumers, creators, news outlets, retailers, students, politicians, free speech advocates,... Basically everyone that doesn't own one of like 10 damn websites or major ISPs.
Musk's replies on Twitter (which I saw on Bluesky lol) are essentially instructions for how you should use Twitter in such a way that benefits and pleases him, even if this is inconvenient for you, the user. Twitter people seem to accept this. Why?
Some palates are just set on boot.
“Free speech” is newspeak for limited, curated speech.
so the genius free speech absolutist has rigged his platform so that if journos, news orgs, and content creators post links outside of his platform those posts get buried UNLESS that content is posted on his platform.
in other words elon wants to own the work produced by others.
and then he wonders why people are fleeing his nazi echo chamber in droves.
and then he wonders why people are fleeing his nazi echo chamber in droves.
I skipped through the current episode of a podcast I used to like until I realized they were closeted magas just today to see if they'd come to their senses. Nope, it seems they will be dead to me forever.
However, I had to laugh that one thing I heard them lamenting was that since all the "liberal" people have gone to Bluesky "to cry", the only people left for conservatives to argue with on X is each other. (And apparently they are doing so quite a lot over Trump's cabinet choices.)
Has anyone checked Meta? I'm thinking if he's gotten this idea, Zuckerberg might not be far behind.
Pretty sure all the adweb enclosures have been doing this for years now. Even pre-Musk acquisition people mentioned that Twitter seemed to bury posts with links, this is just Musk putting it upfront.
This is how these businesses try to squeeze people for money. Bury outbound links unless you pay up to have them as ads/sponsored/promoted posts.
Nice.
Besides the user engagement reasons, it’s pretty obvious why Elon Musk specifically would want people to not check sources. Nothing better for Xitter disinformation campaigns than not having readily available links to other sources.
What a Xithole.
X is trash and no sane person should still be using it.
Just write a description in the main post and put the link in the reply. This just stops lazy linking.
I agree with Elon's sentiment in this (though sticking a link in a reply is kind've inelegant — imo, Lemmy would be better for this, as it has a separate title and body). This is something that bothers me on Lemmy; I'm not super fond of the practice of simply copy-pasting articles from news sites into posts; it feels very lazy and spammy. Lemmy is under no obligation to repeat the clickbait and misinformation that a news site may be compelled to use. When an article is shared, I think that it should, in general, be used as a source to back up a claim rather than the entire post itself. Posts should be human oriented rather than just an outlet for news spam.
Of course he is. Abandon the sinking ship faster.
All a part of keepin' 'em dumb.
The real reason they want people to put content and images directly into the post instead of "lazily linking" it is because by doing so the EULA gives X the right to use that content for their recommendation algorithms and AI training data. External sites can be copyrighted and paywalled.
prompting concerns about press freedom and revenue impacts
😑