Elon Musk uses Twitter to take revenge on his enemies
Elon Musk, who declared himself a Republican last year, has been caught repeatedly spreading lies, including full-blown conspiracy theories. At the same time, he still calls himself an “absolutist of freedom of speech.” But here’s another example of how this is just another lie: Twitter slows down links to sites that Musk has a personal dislike for.
This was reported by Channel 24 with reference to Engadget.
Musk’s new orders at the helm of social network X, formerly known as Twitter, have had a tangible impact on major news publishers such as The New York Times and Reuters, as well as competing social networks Facebook, Threads, Substack, Mastodon, and Bluesky. According to the source, X now slows down the loading time of links posted on the platform. At first glance, this may seem like a trifle, but it can actually turn into a disaster.
What is happening
The delay in downloading was first reported by an anonymous user of the Hacker News hacker forum. According to him, anyone who tries to open a link to one of the restricted sites will see at least a five-second delay before being redirected to the destination. The fact is that Twitter uses a special tool called t.co to shorten the links published on its pages. So users have to go through it first before they end up on the site of their choice. At this stage, the company can influence the transition process. All affected resources were found to take longer to load than others, such as The Washington Post and USA Today.
Slower downloads primarily affect the overall user experience. In the era of high-speed Internet, people are becoming increasingly impatient with slow-loading websites, and may stop using a particular resource without even realizing that they have been artificially induced to do so. “Not only do users expect to see results quickly and get frustrated when they don’t, but page speed also has an immediate impact on their professional opinion of you,” said Dionne Kidd of Knowmad Digital Marketing.
But what’s worse, Musk’s actions could affect the profits of the affected sites. Page loading speed affects the ranking of an article or website in a search engine: fast-loading websites have higher rankings in Google. Its algorithms, which scan not only the websites themselves but also Twitter pages with links, give preference to those sources that take no longer than 2.5 seconds to load. Thus, it reduces the number of potential audiences that will see the link, and thus the number of views on ads, which is a source of income for many.
Thus, Elon Musk’s actions affect a number of processes, including search engine rankings. An anonymous Hacker News contributor says that this delay is “so consistent that it’s obviously intentional.”
- On the same day that the upload delays were discovered, Elon Musk called The New York Times an “apologist for racial genocide” in response to a report on South Africa.
- Earlier, he had attacked the same publication for an article about his business shortcomings and inept management style. The head of the company called the NYT reports “propaganda” and its news “the Twitter equivalent of diarrhea.”
- Bluesky owner and former Twitter executive Jack Dorsey has criticized Musk for his disastrous leadership since acquiring the company in October.
- Musk also targeted Substack after the company introduced a new feature in April, creating what could be considered a Twitter competitor. Musk then changed the code in a tweet, banning users from interacting with Substack or Substack-related content.
- There is no need to explain about Threads: Musk has been blasting Mark Zuckerberg for days after the launch of Meta’s new text social network, and is even considering suing him for alleged intellectual property theft.
As usual, X does not respond to requests for comment. Instead, The New York Times says that it has also noticed this problem, but has not received any explanation from the platform.
It seems that Elon Musk lacks a few high-profile lawsuits for anti-competitive behavior.
Also, Musk’s actions are a play along with Trump, who loves Putin, and, accordingly, blocking Starlink terminals on the battlefield in Ukraine because of his personal sympathy for the Russians.
