back to article Musk's X caught throttling outbound links to websites he doesn't like

Elon Musk's X was this week caught throttling outbound links to several sites, coincidentally ones that the billionaire has complained about or feuded with in the past. Links directing users of the website formerly known as Twitter to news sources such as The New York Times and Reuters, social media platforms Facebook, …

  1. xyz123 Silver badge

    So basically x.com is engaged in DNS fraud. opening a fake "before" website...pretending its the actual website and delaying you. Since once you're on a REAL website x.com can't control the speed of access.

    So this was 100% malicious fuckery. No wonder 85-95% of twitter users quit.

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      t.co links have been around probably as long as Twitter, only Musk used his galaxy brain to stick a sleep(5) in there if the address the t.co link lead to was NYT, Threads, etc...

      1. MachDiamond Silver badge

        I avoid links with shortened URL's. I prefer to know where a link will take me.

    2. DS999 Silver badge

      Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

      He believes in it except when someone says something he doesn't agree with.

      Imagine if Facebook was caught delaying links to Twitter (I refuse to use his stupid new name) he'd scream bloody murder about "free speech" because he has never understood exactly what the first amendment means, only what the right wing wishes it meant.

      1. ShameElevator

        Re: Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

        But Musk has free speech and is allowed to wait for five seconds before loading a website. Yeah, that’s it. Free speech restored!

        1. DS999 Silver badge

          Re: Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

          Yes any person or company has free speech rights, including a right to choose to restrict speech of people using their property to speak. Twitter could kick off every liberal if they wanted, and that would not violate the first amendment.

          The only thing that the first amendment protects against is the government controlling who can speak and where, it says nothing about what individuals and companies may do to limit speech.

          1. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

            Re: Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

            I don't think I've heard Musky say anything about the first amendment, probably because he doesn't understand it. He's always on about absolute free speech.

            1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

              Re: always on about absolute free speech

              Which he has no qualms on quashing himself.

              As usual, one rule for the peons, on rule for the ruler.

              I really would like Musk to fuck off to Mars, although I can't bear thinking of the plight of all the other people forced to put up with that asshole.

              1. Bebu
                Windows

                Re: always on about absolute free speech

                《I really would like Musk to fuck off to Mars》

                Just half way would do quite nicely.

                The communications delay would still be a tad more than 5 sec ;)

                1. MrDamage

                  Re: always on about absolute free speech

                  Have you ever considered the reason why billionaires are rushing into space, is because guillotines need gravity to work?

                  1. MachDiamond Silver badge

                    Re: always on about absolute free speech

                    "because guillotines need gravity to work?"

                    If you have a few bob to spare, I'll rig you up with one that will work in 0G just fine.

                  2. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

                    Re: always on about absolute free speech

                    is because guillotines need gravity to work

                    Springs - all you need is springs..

                    (Blade gets pulled upwards, stretching the spring. Ratchet is released, spring does its thing..)

                    1. Anonymous Coward
                      Anonymous Coward

                      Re: always on about absolute free speech

                      Or take advantage of General Relativity's Equivalence Princple. Give the spaceship a quick 1g boost and a guillotine will work just as well.

                2. MachDiamond Silver badge

                  Re: always on about absolute free speech

                  "《I really would like Musk to fuck off to Mars》

                  Just half way would do quite nicely."

                  He'd need to be on good terms with Tory Bruno at ULA to be able to get a rocket that would get him there or even half way. I guess if you didn't bother with life support the Falcon Heavy could do it.

            2. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

              I don't think you understand it either.

              As much as I think Elon Musk is a bit of a knobhead...he is not in conflict with the 1st Amendment, firstly because he cannot pass laws and is not the government and also because of the 9th Amendment.

              "The Ninth Amendment states that the list of rights enumerated in the Constitution is not exhaustive, and that the people retain all rights not enumerated."

              Therefore, Musk has the right to censor content on his privately owned platform if he wishes...just as you have the right to say whatever the fuck you want, he has the right to decide what you're saying is crap.

              This is not a theory, this is how your ancient out of date constitution works.

              The constitution exists to protect the people from the government...that's why everything in the US, right up to healthcare is generally private. Because the constitution doesn't apply to private entities. The constitution that every Yank quotes on a regular basis is exactly what fucks you.

              The US is not the land of the free, it is the land of the private corporation...you can do and say pretty much anything you like without breaking the law in the US, unless you're on private property..in which case the owner of the private property has the right to fuck you off, because they have the right to bear arms, and the government can't stop them because of their rights. They can bang them up after they have murdered you, but there is nothing they can do to prevent your ass being turned into worm food.

              If you think about it, the constitution is a work of genius when it comes to managing the unwashed masses, it's a framework geared up to have the riffraff kill each other. Let them say anything and give them guns. What could go wrong?

              1. aerogems Silver badge

                Re: Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

                I think you're maybe conflating some aspirational statements with statements of fact or law. An all too common refrain online. Someone says, "I think it should be this way" and someone inevitably comes along and says, "The law says it's this way!" Well, yeah, but that wasn't the point. The point was the first person expressing an aspirational desire about how they wish things were not how they are.

                And while I can't really fault much else of what you say, the bit about giving everyone guns isn't really in the US Constitution. Some wingnuts on the SCOTUS bench decided to just completely ignore the whole "Well regulated militia" bit in order to arrive at a specific conclusion. What was envisioned by the authors was probably something more like the current National Guard. When the US was founded it had no standing army, or means of taxing people in order to pay for it, and so relied on being able to raise a citizen militia. Also, at the time the country was founded, guns had an effective fire rate of about 1 shot per 5-10 minutes, and accuracy rates were pretty low. Just my personal bit of speculation, but if the authors of the Constitution had a means of knowing that eventually we'd have fully automatic weapons that can fire off dozens of shots within a few seconds with orders of magnitude more accuracy, they would have chosen different language.

                1. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

                  I totally agree, but I was speaking in terms of what the typical American understands to be the "right to bear arms" which as you point out is interpreted by loonies to mean fully automatic assault rifles.

                2. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

                  Re: Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

                  guns had an effective fire rate of about 1 shot per 5-10 minutes

                  They must have been *really* bad at gunnery.. The British soldiers at Waterloo (and previously, in the Peninsular War) were expected to fire 3 rounds per minute (and did so because they spent a lot of time training to do it). The French expected two per minute - the experienced regiments could manage it but not the conscripts.

                  That's one of the many reasons why Napoleon was defeated (plus the whole "starting a war on two fronts thing - and the tactic that determined that the French attack in a column, not a line so only the front short line could fire..)

                3. Diogenes

                  Re: Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

                  Well regulated militia" bit i

                  ...Have a look at 10 US Code S 246...

                  (a)The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.

                  (b)The classes of the militia are—

                  (1)the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and

                  (2)the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.

              2. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

                Re: Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

                I don't think you understand it either.
                Sure, I'm not a US constitutional legal expert or even a student of US constitutional law.

                It doesn't matter very much what Elon Musk has the right to do. For him to shout from the rooftops about freedom of speech while actively censoring others is the height of hypocrisy.

                1. CowHorseFrog Silver badge

                  Re: Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

                  The number of bullshit replies above your comment, is the perfect summary of what is wrong with America.

                  These people even when they make no personal gain, will still talk bullshit...rather than remember they are just one of many who benefits far more from people doing the honourable thing ratehr than bullshit.

          2. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

            Re: Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

            I agree that Twitter.2 limiting referrals to businesses Musk does not like is just as legal as Twitter.1 suspending accounts of republicans. The difference is the consequences. When people were angered by what Twitter.1 allowed on their site they complained to the businesses buying adverts who threatened to stop buying adverts. Twitter.1 capitulated. That had consequences too: obnoxious people were limited to unpopular social media sites where they could talk to each other without bothering the rest of us.

            Twitter.2's recent actions had sufficient consequences the Musk promptly backed down yet again, although this time with less pissing and whining first.

            1. DS999 Silver badge

              Re: Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

              Yes but Musk is already doing a very effective job of driving away advertisers even when he isn't discriminating for or against anyone. Stupid shit like changing the name of a company with a brand value in the billions to a letter because of his stubborn wet dream about an "everything app" that even less likely than making fetch happen. Or getting rid of the former system of blue checkmarks that identified verified accounts of important figures so you knew it was the "real" Condoleeza Rice or the "real" Quaker Oats as opposed to someone who just paid $8 and decided it would be fun to troll people and damage someone else's brand.

              If he further piles onto the already obvious simping for Trump and the MAGA movement (just look at how much he fought the subpoena for Trump's Twitter info when they have pretty much never fought lawful subpoenas in either the US or another country let alone gone to such extraordinary lengths) he not only risks even greater damage to that advertising business, but his increasingly toxic persona is having noticeable effects on Tesla as well.

              If this were a Star Trek or Marvel movie, at this point in the plot I would say its obvious he's been replaced by a changeling or a skrull. It is like we are witnessing someone's mental deterioration in real time - or he has successfully hid who he really was for over a decade in the public eye (and if that's the case, I'm sure a lot of political consultants would pay big money to know how he did it!)

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

                he didn't change he has always been an arsehole, if you believed anything else about him, you were fooled by the hype and lies.

              2. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

                I'm not a fan of Musk but...

                "doing a very effective job of driving away advertisers"

                Do people really think that the end game for "X" or whatever it ends up being called is to make money from advertising? That's largely a dead meme at this point...advertising doesn't make anywhere near as much revenue as it used to and with advertisers turning puritanical I think it's more likely for platforms to fuck them off in the medium term than the advertisers fucking the platforms off. For every 1 advertiser that won't pay to advertise on a less desirable platform, there are probably 10 others that are absolutely fine with it. For every hippy dippy ethical flip flop wearing holistic massage for every worker holier than thou business, there are 10 Bernard Matthews "Turkocalypse" meat grinders out there. The nice thing about all these anointed "Christ Like" so called "ethical" businesses is they tend to self-censor...so if Bernard Matthews does decide to bombard the likes of Twitter with ads, it will scare the vegetarians off because they don't want to be associated with a platform that allows the promotion Turkeycide. This hurts the ethical brand more than it hurts the platform because the moderate middle ground (i.e. the mass market) doesn't give a shit and the niche market that exists for the niche bamboo underpants businesses becomes even more niche...by not advertising on a platform they disagree with, they hurt their potential to spread their message...which in some cases might be a message worth listening to...but through sheer fucking hubris it will never be heard because they don't want to be seen side by side with a turkey drumstick advert.

                The way these advertisers operate seems to be akin to arranging a group of non-smokers and preaching to the health effects of heavy smoking. Preaching to the choir as it were.

                Driving away advertisers isn't necessarily business suicide these days for platforms, it is only business suicide if you pull your advertising campaign because you want to appear whiter than white while ironically not appearing to anyone. As has already been demonstrated, people are willing to pay for things instead of having ads foisted on them...Twitter Blue shows this...and with this evidence in hand, Twitter no longer needs to be worried about advertisers de-platforming as much as it used to, because the bargaining power of advertisers is diminished. They can no longer throw around as much weight as they once could, because they have a lot less weight to throw.

                The future of revenue for "free" services is not advertising, but, I believe, facilitating transactions.

                I can see a future where large ecommerce platforms are essentially just an API wrapped around a network of warehouses and logistics (technically, Amazon is already there with it's Marketplace)...with content creators etc becoming the front end. The goal for ecommerce has always been to shorten the user journey from discovering a product to buying it...there is no shorter route than clicking a buy now button on a Youtube video or a website. There is also no better sales channel than someone with a trusted reputation shilling for a cut.

                The benefits of this sort of mechanism are huge, because ultimately you can sell anything without causing as much fuss...because people will only see products they are interested in through the creators that put out content that they want to watch...which means all the beetroot smoothie crowd will get to exist in their squeaky clean bubble without ever seeing a Turkey drumstick. The platform facilitating the transaction is entirely neutral and if people don't like Turkey drumsticks they can boycott the creator instead.

                1. Steve Button Silver badge

                  Re: Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

                  Thumbs up for ... Bernard Matthews "Turkocalypse" meat grinders

                2. DS999 Silver badge

                  Re: Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

                  Advertising doesn't make money?

                  I guess you aer shorting Google since over 100% of their profit comes from advertising (everything else they do collectively loses money) Let us know how that works out for you!

                  1. MachDiamond Silver badge

                    Re: Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

                    "I guess you aer shorting Google since over 100% of their profit comes from advertising"

                    They make a S-ton of money selling PII. So much that advertising could go away and they'd still be profitable.

                  2. CowHorseFrog Silver badge

                    Re: Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

                    Google and advertising is the biggest con after religion.

                    How many ads for cars can someone see in a year before it becomes complete bullshit and obviously a big con for the advertising client ?

                  3. Anonymous Coward
                    Anonymous Coward

                    Re: Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

                    Err no it doesn't.

                    The overhead on slinging ads is higher now than it has ever been because of all the shit they have to do to moderate where the ads pop up etc to appease the advertisers. I'd imagine the profit on ads is pretty damned thin. It generates huge revenue, but not a lot of profit. At least 50% of that revenue goes to content creators and based on figures I've seen for ad revenue at various customers, it's not a lot of money. Most businesses treat ad revenue as a way to cover the costs of running something to ensure that whatever other revenue streams they have are higher profit...ad revenue in itself is never seen as a profit making exercise.

                    We're probably reaching a point now where the demands of advertisers are pretty close to making it not worth the effort for the likes of Google etc...which will either result in a smaller share of the revenue going to devs / creators or they will just serve fewer ads to fewer people with any real value...probably the latter.

                    I have a couple of ad supported apps myself...and I make more revenue from the "ad" version of my app than the "paid no ad" version. Weirdly, my actual paying customers are worth far less than the freetards. I'd need to charge 5-10x more for the ad free version of my apps for those customers to be worth as much as the free loaders. An ad based user is worth about £5-£20 a year to me...but a paying customer is worth £1.99 forever because people that buy your app generally won't spend £30 a year...it's why loot boxes and shit exist...because people want something every time they spend something...paying £2 for a loot box with some random shit in it, weirdly to a customer, seems like better value than simply spending £2 a month to keep an app running.

                    The other weird irony is the "paying customers" that chuck in the £1.99 are the ones that complain the loudest if they find a bug or something...somehow thinking that because they paid, they are more valuable...a more premium customer....couldn't be further from the truth.

                    The only reason I have a "paid for" version of my apps is that it separates out the reviews and comments. Those that are more valuable, will find the more level headed comments and reviews on the free app whilst the whiners will be isolated to their own feed of reviews and comments that I can moderate without anyone on the free app knowing that I'm "cleaning" up the feed.

                    For ever £1 you charge for your app, you're essentially losing a star in rating...which sucks, because I don't actually want to serve ads, I'd much rather charge a subscription...but unfortunately people put a very low price on their data for which advertisers will pay a premium and Google will give me a generous share.

                    If people knew the value of their data, they may be more inclined to pay properly for apps to avoid themselves being tracked. The average price for a reasonable user profile is around $50-$75...that's not t say that your user details are sold directly by an app developer, they aren't, but the data is gathered via the ad banners you see...the dev doesn't have any control over this...they just get a kick back for serving the ads / trackers.

                    To make it worth the developers while to avoid serving you ads, you'd need to meet or exceed that price per app per year...so if you wanted a dev to 100% never serve you ads / marketing you'd need to pay them $50-$75 a year ($5-6 a month) at least to use their app...which may or may not be worth it to you depending on how regularly you use the app.

                    I personally, would much rather earn $75k a year from 1000 users and never have to sling ads than to try and bring in 10's of 000's of users to earn less than half that...way less pressure, much better money, it would result in a better app.

                    Consumers have the collective power to make this real, but because they don't understand economics, they aren't aware of the power they have...until they do, devs like me have to take money from corporate giants...I'm not complaining, it's all the same to me...whether I build an app that is well funded by consumers or I get paid £150k a time to build a crappy VM test harness for a massive corporate...I get the money all the same...but I'd rather be working for you, than some soulless, faceless corporation...unfortunately I can't do it for free though.

              3. CowHorseFrog Silver badge

                Re: Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

                Poor DS999 he has obviously been brainwashed by the American Media where they consistently praise and worship corporate leadership like they are ideal perfect human beings in all aspects of life.

              4. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

                Fighting a high profile subpoena is far more valuable than fighting a low profile one that nobody gives a shit about because it sets a precedent with a high bar. If they can stop a subpoena on Donald Trumps account, they can theoretically stop any subpoena. There are no double standards here...they're just picking their battles.

          3. CowHorseFrog Silver badge

            Re: Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

            Spoken like a true American.

            You seem to forget the meaning tht the average person understands by free speech aka the spirit of the concept, not playing lawyer bullshit.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

              I'm not actually American and I'm offended that you think so...that said, if what I said sounded typically American then I must be on point because I would imagine the typical America doesn't want to see lies and obnoxious behavior everywhere they go online.

              Nobody knows what the spirit of the constitution was...because nobody alive was there when it was written.

              Also, arguing that walking on to someones property and calling them a wanker was in "the spirit" of free speech won't get you very far. The spirit of free speech to my understanding was to prevent oppression by the government / people in power of the people if they wanted to stand up and criticise the leadership and/or protest.

              It has fuck all to do with e.g. being racist on the internet, spreading lies etc etc...this is not in the spirit of free speech.

      2. Mitoo Bobsworth

        Re: Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

        $44 billion for his own megaphone? That's the most expensive free I've heard of.

        1. MachDiamond Silver badge

          Re: Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

          "$44 billion for his own megaphone? That's the most expensive free I've heard of."

          If he had the skill to make his own, he could have had one for $2bn but he's never been good at software.

      3. Steve Button Silver badge

        Re: Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

        You are getting free speech muddled up with anti-competitive behaviour. And going by all the thumbs up, loads of other people are too. You are allowed to say pretty much what you want on Twitter, including pointing out conflicts of interest at the NIH where they get $$ hundreds of millions in kickbacks from the pharma companies (and don't have to disclose it!!). This is just one example. Try saying that on Facebook, YouTube or even LinkedIN and you'll suddenly find yourself breaking the "coimmunity guidelines"

        Not that I'm a fan of Twitter any more, I stopped using it a couple of weeks ago and my wife tells me I'm not such a grumpy old sod any more. It was making me stressed out basically because of all the extreme views on there all the time. It's a toxic mess, along with pretty much all social media platforms. I'm done with them all.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

          You have been spouting off about vaccines and ivermectin and I claim my £5.

          1. Steve Button Silver badge

            Re: Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

            I don't understand?

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

              well that's really not a surprise

      4. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

        "He believes in it except when someone says something he doesn't agree with".

        Isn't that basically everyone though?

        I agree that people should be able to voice whatever opinions they like, but I don't want to hear the ones I disagree with over and over again. I'll listen to you once...if you're lucky.

        If someone wants to knock on doors on my street to bring news that the rapture is coming and they believe it, that's fine, I'll feel sorry for them and humour them for a while, I may even exercise my right to tell them they're talking shit...but if they do it every day, persistently...then people are going to get bent out of shape and want the fellow sectioned and possibly given some psychological counseling. Twitter is no different other than it's scale and the complete lack of ability to physically stop people posting shit...and it is international in scale.

        Similarly, Elon Musk owns it and is free to do as he pleases. If you disagree with that, give me your address...I'll come to your house, tell you how fucking ugly your wife and kids are and I'll point out every hurrendous interior design decision you've made.

        Is Elon Musk breaking any laws? No.

        Is he a danger to free speech? No.

        Are you a fucking maniac for thinking that you can tell someone how to run their own house? Yes.

        "He'd scream bloody murder"

        I honestly don't think he would. I doubt he'd even mention it because it is inconsequential to him...in the same way that Zuckerberg has said fuck all...if anything there are parallels to be drawn...Zuckerberg hates the media as much as Musk seems to...he's had plenty of run ins with news media in various countries and has gone so far as to de-platform news outlets entirely which is far more heavy handed than a 5 second link delay.

      5. Fr. Ted Crilly Silver badge

        Re: Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

        TwiX you mean.

        Also a pleasant biscuity chocolate confectionery produced by the Mars company btw.

        1. Strahd Ivarius Silver badge
          Joke

          Re: Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

          So EM wants to land on Mars to grab a Twix?

          1. CowHorseFrog Silver badge

            Re: Mr unlimited free speech strikes again

            No Elon Musk wants to milk the American tax payer he has no intention of going anywhere near space...It all a big con to grab more money. Musk has learn well from Beardie that governments have the most money and ask the least questions to hand it out.

            At least Jeff and his brother went up for a few hours.

    3. Steve Button Silver badge

      > No wonder 85-95% of twitter users quit.

      Can you provide stats for that? I don't believe it. From what I've heard it's been pretty flat, or a slight decline. Some of that decline could be bots. 85 - 95% drop would be quite big news.

      1. Strahd Ivarius Silver badge
        Trollface

        X comm' department is ready to answer all your inquiries...

        (don't confuse it with XCom however)

  2. mark l 2 Silver badge

    That why I select copy and paste the full URL to an new tab than go through the URL redirects that these social media website use. They exist so they can track what you are clicking on and even block site they deem you shouldn't be visiting.

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      Indeed. I'm thinking that a good little CleanURL addon would do wonders to avoid that kind of issue as well.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Why annoy users like this?"

    > Yoel Roth, former head of trust and safety at Twitter, said in a post to Bluesky yesterday

    Just in case anyone has ever wondered what a "rhetorical question" looks like, Yoel here is leading a master class, by example.

  4. aerogems Silver badge

    Is anyone really surprised?

    Seriously. This is like the least dickish thing this guy has done in... years at least.

    But, IMO, this is just another argument in favor of net neutrality. A "public forum" as Twitler is so fond of calling his mean girls platform, shouldn't be allowed to play favorites. Either all links are delayed -- by action of the "public forum" admins -- or none are. It'd apply the same to Facebook, Reddit, and other sites. You invite people to come in and post content, if that content includes a link to another site you don't get to say, "But they posted something mean about me the other day and really hurt my fee fees! Block them!" I don't really see this as any different from ISPs not being allowed to restrict traffic, outside of normal congestion management, or doing shit like zero rating.* Don't like it? You can shut the site down, or stop inviting the entire world to come along and post shit.

    * I guess since unlimited data plans are back that one may not apply until ISPs decide to start charging people for data again

    1. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

      Re: Is anyone really surprised?

      ISP's restricting/charging for specific traffic is a different issue, and has mostly been squashed. ISPs' plan was to run their own versions of the most profitable services and drive competitors out of the business with selective fees to "reduce throttling". One of the obvious laws to apply is using a monopoly in on field to create a monopoly in another.

      Twitter is not a monopoly. It is a private business. If Musk wants to enshittify the service to a particular group that is his choice. Affected users can go elsewhere or complain to advertisers. Those steps are clearly effective given how quickly Musk back-tracks.

    2. FIA Silver badge

      Re: Is anyone really surprised?

      If you want a public forum then the public would have to pay for it.

      Twitter is a private company. They can do as they please (within the law).

      Maybe there is an argument for a public service 'twitter' for want of a better term. No idea how that would work or be effectively funded though.

      1. aerogems Silver badge

        Re: Is anyone really surprised?

        As I said, Twitler's the one calling Twitter a public forum, so that argument doesn't hold any water. He's the one actively inviting people to come along and post shit.

        Moving along, you seem to have mistaken the whole point of my post. I said Twitter SHOULD be subject to the basic principles of net neutrality, not that it currently is.

  5. localzuk

    Coming soon...

    This just seems like its a test of something for the future. How long until adding links to tweets is restricted to paying users?

    1. GioCiampa

      Re: Coming soon...

      "How long until adding links to tweets is restricted to paying users?"

      Given that TweetDeck is now pay-to-play ... I imagine it won't be long.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    X marks the prat

    It’s quite easy to solve.

    Never use or visit his ex-Twitter, Twitter 2.0, X-Treme right wing whatsit.

  7. Groo The Wanderer

    Nothing like having a petulant child running things who impacts business performance based on their own personal irritations and whims. Such maturity is rare in 2 year olds...

  8. Mike 137 Silver badge

    The average gnat probably does better

    " if a page takes too long to open, even a couple of seconds, people will click back or close the tab"

    If the typical 'X' user has an attention span of less than a couple of seconds, the content of the New York Times, and probaby most of that at Reuters, would be impenetrable to it anyway.

  9. tonique
    FAIL

    I don't even want to X "X". Apologies to Massive Attack.

  10. azander

    320 be damned?

    IF this throttling is true, and from my less than scientific tests show it is, then isn't X now in violation of section 320? The section that the Politicians want to kill? It is a fairly easy violation to prove or disprove. Maybe someone at the NYT or the other sites should step up and sue X for this violation. This will test, in court, the power of Section 320 and test the ability for private busineses to filter content either through outright censorship or throttling.

  11. CowHorseFrog Silver badge

    The more someone protests about something in thise case Musk and free speech the more evident they are the opposite.

  12. MachDiamond Silver badge

    Every time

    When Elon pulls this sort of douchbagery it just continues to reinforce what sort of person he really is. That he's slowing down traffic in any way will only mean that people will use his service less and less. It's the law of unintended consequences. I'm not sure if we'd see any improvement, but it wouldn't hurt him to try and make something as good as it can possibly be rather than play little games in order to hinder others.

    I was hired to work for a company that had an interesting design for an 'external combustion engine'. Instead of getting the team started on the project they spent all of their investment money setting up a convoluted corporate structure to avoid taxes that they folded up before I was given a start date. The engineering manager was a friend I worked with before and he left feeling soiled by the whole experience. Given the team, we could have had something in testing PDQ as we have all worked on varied projects in the past and were all chomping at the bit to do something new.

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