X, social media service formerly known as TwitterIt slowed access to rival sites such as Substack and Facebook from its platform, but on Tuesday began reversing an effort to ban its users from quickly viewing news sites, according to a New York Times analysis.
The slow speeds, known in technical parlance as “throttling”, initially affected rival social networks, including Facebook. Blue Sky and Instagram, as well as newsletter site Substack and news outlets including Reuters and The New York Times, according to an analysis by The Times. According to the analysis, the delay in loading links from X was relatively minor – about 4.5 seconds – but still noticeable. Many of the services that were throttled have faced the wrath of X owner Elon Musk.
By Tuesday afternoon, the delay in accessing news sites was gone, according to an analysis by The Times.
X did not comment on the throttling, which was first noticed by users. Washington Post X’s move to delay the link to competing services was reported earlier.
Mr Musk had previously slowed down access to other websites from X. Last year, they blocked the link for some time Mastodon, a competitive service. In April, he also temporarily blocked users from it. substack link sharing On X the company said it planned to launch a Twitter competitor.
In recent weeks, Mr Musk has debated online with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who introduced a competing social media service called Threads, Mr. Musk has also called for a personal struggle and threatened to come out to Mr. Zuckerberg this week. a cage fight The two billionaires then discussed a formal match but called it off.
“While we hope Twitter will reverse its decision to delay Substack links, our focus remains on building Substack,” company founders Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie and Jairaj Sethi said in a statement about the throttling. “Substack was created in direct response to this type of behavior by social media companies.”
In a post on Threads, Mr. Zuckerberg react With a “thinking face emoji” on the post highlighting the issue. Representatives for Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and Threads, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Charlie Stadlander, a spokesman for The Times, said the company had not received an explanation for the delay, adding, “We would be concerned about targeted pressure being applied to any news organization for unclear reasons.”
Social media services such as YouTube and news outlets including CNN and The Washington Post appeared unaffected by the throttling.
Mike IsaacJustin Heidmann and Hubert Mandeville contributed reporting.
