16th August 2023: Elon Musk, the owner of X (formerly known as Twitter) and CEO of Tesla, has come under scrutiny for allegedly throttling traffic to websites that have been critical of him in the past. A report by The Washington Post has shed light on X’s actions, revealing that the platform increased the load times of pages for news websites such as The New York Times, wire agency Reuters, and even some of X’s direct competitors, including Mastodon and Bluesky.
X operates as a social media platform where various news agencies and brands share links to their respective websites. The act of increasing load times for these websites directly impacts their traffic, subsequently affecting their revenue. The report from The Washington Post states that page load times were extended to as much as 5 seconds. However, since the report’s publication, there has been a substantial reduction in these load times.
It’s not just news organizations facing these delays. X’s competitors, including Facebook, Meta (owner of Facebook and Instagram), Bluesky, Substack, and others, have also reported difficulties with their load times. The delays have been attributed to the t.co link-shortening domain.
The issue first gained attention on Hacker News, a tech forum, where users noticed link delays to The New York Times starting from August 4th. Coincidentally, on the same day, Elon Musk criticized The New York Times’ coverage of South Africa and accused the publication of endorsing genocide. However, there is no concrete evidence directly linking Musk’s remarks to the link delays.
Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter in October the previous year had raised concerns about his influence on the platform’s content and operations. He has been outspoken against several prominent news organizations and journalists critical of his companies, including Tesla and SpaceX. In the past, Musk temporarily blocked accounts of journalists and even a flight tracking account that he considered a safety hazard.
As the situation unfolds, it raises questions about the balance between platform ownership and editorial influence, as well as the potential impact of such actions on free speech and the independence of media organizations.
