The delayed websites included X’s online rivals Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky and Substack, as well as the Reuters wire service and the Times. All of them have previously been singled out by Musk for ridicule or attack.
The delay affects the t.co domain, a link-shortening service that X uses to process every link posted to the website. Traffic is routed through the middleman service, allowing X to track — and in this case throttle — activity to the target website, potentially taking away traffic and ad revenue from businesses Musk personally dislikes.
The Post’s analysis found that links to most other sites were unaffected — including those to The Washington Post, Fox News and social media services such as Mastodon and YouTube — with the shortened links being routed to their final destination in a second or less. A user first flagged the delays early Tuesday on the technology discussion forum Hacker News.
Musk, a self-described “free speech absolutist,” did not respond to requests for comment. X also did not respond. Some of the targeted businesses said they were reviewing the matter when contacted Tuesday by The Post.
Substack’s cofounders Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie and Jairaj Sethi said in a statement to The Post that they urged X to reverse the decision instituting a delay on Substack links.
“Substack was created in direct response to this kind of behavior by social media companies,” they said. “Writers cannot build sustainable businesses if their connection to their audience depends on unreliable platforms that have proven they are willing to make changes that are hostile to the people who use them.”
Online companies pour millions of dollars into ensuring their websites open as quickly as possible, knowing that even tiny delays can lead their traffic to plunge as users grow inpatient with the delay and go elsewhere.
Musk has berated the Times as “propaganda” and the “Twitter equivalent of diarrhea.” In April, he removed the “verified” badge from the news outlet’s now 55-million-follower account, making it harder for viewers to distinguish it from fake accounts. He also criticized the paper this month related to its coverage of South African politics.
The delays also affect X’s biggest rivals in social media. Links to Facebook, Instagram and the new microblogging service Threads have all been throttled; all three are owned by Meta, whose founder and chief Mark Zuckerberg has been locked in an ongoing online feud with Musk over not-yet-existent plans for a mixed-martial-arts fight.
X also throttles traffic to Bluesky, the platform started with help from former Twitter chief Jack Dorsey, who has used it to criticize Musk’s leadership. The same throttling also applies to Substack, the email newsletter platform that runs its own short-text service, Substack Notes.
Musk has shown little reluctance to use X’s technical tools to pursue personal grudges. In December, after Musk’s takeover, Twitter banned an account known as ElonJet that tracked the flights of Musk’s private jet, banned journalists who reported on the episode and suspended the official account of a large rival, Mastodon, for referring to the account in a tweet.
The site also began using technical hurdles to make it more difficult for Twitter users to access Mastodon, including marking the website as “unsafe” and blocking users from adding Mastodon links to their profiles. ElonJet now posts on Threads, Mastodon and Bluesky.
