Drew Harwell: New: Elon Musk’s X is throttling traffic to news websites and competitors he dislikes, including this one. Five-second delays on links to Bluesky, New York Times, Reuters, Facebook, Instagram, Threads and Substack. Most other sites we tested have zero delay https://wapo.st/3OYfTa6

New: Elon Musk’s X is throttling traffic to news websites and competitors he dislikes, including this one. Five-second delays on links to Bluesky, New York Times, Reuters, Facebook, Instagram, Threads and Substack. Most other sites we tested have zero delay https://wapo.st/3OYfTa6

Substack’s cofounders Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie, and Jairaj Sethi tell me in a statement: "Substack was created in direct response to this kind of behavior by social media companies" https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/08/15/twitter-x-links-delayed/

New York Times spokesman Charlie Stadtlander tells me in a statement: "We have not received any explanation from the platform about this move" and "would be concerned by targeted pressure applied to any news organization for unclear reasons"

And just like that, hours after our story first published, X has started reversing the throttling on some of the sites, including NYT's. Here's what it looks like. https://washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/08/15/twitter-x-links-delayed/

Epilogue: In the course of reporting this story today I must have seen this Xitter ad at least 45 times

That is an incredibly ugly product, and the ad screams "and it's poorly made, too!!"

Yes but do you see those 😍 Multi pockets 😍

The Man burns in 17 days…

I mute all the ads that come up. There's so much more now than there used to be.

No thanks, I'll stick with my purse. In fact, I think I'll get a bigger one.

I saw this ad so much in my brief time on there today.

We need the bag space to store all our Cheech & Chong Gummies

What getting busted looks like in graph form. Amazing.

he is honestly one of the dumbest people on the planet lmfao

thank you! he is. like insanely dumb.

legit feel like i have run out of words to describe his stupidity at this point

I am so glad to be off that hellsite, even though it means having to rebuild a following and communities built over a decade.

Sigh. Every time I see the word “hellsite” I remember when the place was worth having a *love*-hate relationship with.

I feel ya! It was my fave social site before it became so Nazified

Something to be said for a fresh start though

Elon is seriously his own worst enemy.

Well can he destroy himself a little faster?

I'm in awe of your powers, Drew. Kind of am not kidding!

Has he sworn it never happened yet?

“ElonJet now posts on Threads, Mastodon, Bluesky [and Nostr.]” https://nostr.band/npub1ylccvgzdlan2vyh4snx9u8kjpk8580tm2ecxmvv72mzem3xevt9qw0z7ks

Doesn't this graph show the opposite it's level until it completely drops off? Am I missing something

yes, you are missing something. The X-axis is today, the Y-axis is response times. The response times today (since the throttled was introduced) was flat at 4500ms. Now it's back down to normal response times.

Thank you for this, I should have explained it better

Now it all makes sense silly me

check the y axis - it's flat at 5 seconds and then drops back down to baseline

Oh response times that is different now it makes sense👍

Predictable.

What advantage does the NYT have by playing dumb. "unclear reasons" these are not. Elon is a little baby who cannot handle criticism in even the lightest form.

Because to have such a massive publication come out and openly say he’s a narcissistic worm and a manchild with an ego so large it has its own gravity well that attracts only the most gullible morons would be unprofessional

User seconds 5x overnight. Genius!

Just tested WaPo vs NYT. WaPo was instant. NYT was delayed. Unreal.

Holy shit I did too and all the NYT links I clicked took EXACTLY five seconds before starting to load

He’s scared of Bezos.

😆 both Bezos and Zuck can beat him up

He's such a petty asshat

Musk is showing us the frightening amount of unregulated power website and app owners have over our content and ability to even use the Internet. Hopefully, this leads to some good changes in how the Internet functions...

What would you change about regulations/the Internet to address it?

i agree with the premise but my approach would be the opposite - decentralize control away from monolithic huge companies

The first link is from the NYT. The second is from an official UK website. Click both and compare how long each takes to load: https://t.co/4fs609qwWt https://t.co/iigzas6QBx

Wow, that’s an uncomfortable amount of time to just watch it do nothing

the first one took me ten seconds and the second one took four. like... wow.

That is pretty close to my experience, as well. The first one almost makes me feel like my phone is locked up.

Exactly?? I mean, I'm not even in the US which means my connection is a little bit slower, but such big delay is definitely not common. That man's crazy.

Should really add a direct nyt link without t.co for apples to apples comparison

Post