X Cuts Off Access to Sites Elon Musk Has Feuded With
Elon Musk seems to be taking action against websites he considers as adversaries, as reports suggest that the platform previously known as Twitter is deliberately slowing down the loading speed of links to The New York Times, Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, and Substack.
Clicking on links to these websites from X will cause a significant delay in loading the webpages compared to going through the links from another browser or website. The delay, which appears to be about 5 seconds, was noticed by users on the Hacker News forum and later reported by The Washington Post.
It appears to be widespread, affecting only a handful of high-profile websites that Musk has publicly attacked in the past. The user who first reported the issues on Hacker News estimated that the unexplained delay first appeared on August 4, noting that it’s “so consistent it’s obviously intentional.”
So far, it’s unclear if there are reasons for the delay other than Musk’s personal grievances with these companies. But the delay appears to only affect websites that Musk has retaliated against in the past. He previously blocked links to Substack, Mastodon, Threads and other competitors. Musk has also publicly attacked The Times, revoking the publication’s verified status just prior to the launch of Twitter Blue (now X Premium). The owner of X is also currently feuding with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg over the launch of Twitter competitor Threads.
As usual, X did not respond to a request for comment. The company has largely stopped responding to press inquiries since Elon Musk fired his communications staff shortly after taking over the company.
