Elon Musk continues placing his personal ego and absolute pettiness above the value of Twitter, the social media platform he bought for $44 billion and has proceeded to do his best to run into the ground. The latest: Twitter is reportedly throttling traffic to a set of websites Musk has personally attacked.
The sites affected include Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and Substack—all social media competitors of Twitter—along with the Reuters wire service and The New York Times. When Twitter users (Musk wants us to call it X, but nah) click on links to those sites, it takes five seconds to be redirected rather than the single second or less it takes to get to most sites. The Washington Post reports that a user on the technology discussion forum Hacker News originally flagged the delays, and that the Post’s own tests confirmed it. Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, likewise replicated the issue. Five seconds may not sound like much, but, Roth noted, “Delays are annoying enough, even subconsciously, to drive people away.” That means that the affected sites could be losing pageviews and ad revenue, although they should take comfort in the fact that Twitter was never a particularly good traffic driver.
A spokesman for the Times said in a statement that the newspaper had “made similar observations of our own” but had “not received any explanation from the platform about this move.” Notably, the Hacker News user told the Post he had first seen the delays to the Times on Aug. 4:
On that day, Musk went on a tirade against the news organization, calling it a “racial genocide apologist” and telling people to cancel their subscriptions after the Times reported on a political controversy in South Africa, where Musk was born.
It sure looks like Musk is damaging Twitter’s value to its users (not to mention the lenders Musk owes for the purchase) as well as attacking some very large accounts—the Times has 55 million Twitter followers—out of personal pique. That’s not surprising. In fact, impulsive, small, and petty is pretty much Musk’s brand at this point (along with alt-right troll), a real comedown from the days when he was widely portrayed as a visionary and a genius.
