I mean of course he has a right to do it; just like he has a right to throw away the sole valuable part of the thing he paid for (the brand). That doesn't make it any less stupid.
I made this argument in response to people who called him out for calling Twitter employees back to the office. It is interesting, the response to the "well he owns it" argument seems to be correlated almost entirely with whether you agree with the substance of the action, independent of the righteousness.
Unless it violates something like the Sherman Act[1]. Obviously we don’t know if they are actually doing this throttling and I don’t know whether it would be considered anticompetitive behaviour under that act but it is an example of where even though he has paid the money he doesn’t have the right to do so.
The Sherman Act doesn't ban "anticompetitive behavior" exactly, it bans anticompetitive agreements. If you own a company, you can do whatever you want to screw over your competition. If you get together with some of your rival companies and agree to work together to screw over the rest of the competition, then you run afoul of the law.
He likely has a _right_ to, but it does make his whole ‘free speech’ thing look a little silly (of course, it’s not the first of his actions to do that, by a long shot). Observers have a right to make fun of him for doing so, too.
Well, when previous Twitter management did things like this, Musk said that they were restricting free speech. So this is at least anti "Musk's definition of free speech".
Properties like Twitter are more than just some corporation, it's a user base, and a history of user activity built on user generated content. That was trusted to an organization that, effectively, no longer exists.
He's legally free to do this, but morally is a whole other thing.
He owns Twitter, he probably has the right to do it as a private platforn owner, and it is still worth calling him out for doing it. Freedom of speech he is exercising is not freedom of criticism of speech.
Its especially worthwhile because Musk sold himself as an absolutist of a view of free speech in which platforms like Twitter were not exercisers of free speech but actors whose decision to shape and bias content violated their users rights to free speech.
> There is a certain sense that Elon Musk paid $44 billion to do this, so he has every right to do so.
Even though you can argue the free speech angle regarding news publications such as the new York times, I'm not so sure if blacklisting links to competitors such as Threads is something that sits well with antitrust agencies.
> 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.
It was substantiated by a few dozen HN users, and the Post journalists themselves: X is throttling traffic to some sites and not to others.
It appears this throttling is based in part on the useragent since at least one HN comment noted that the throttling was observed when using curl spoofing a mozilla user agent.
And at least one other comment noted that t.co uses completely different mechanism for redirecting requests from a browser and from curl and has been doing that since forever.
You're missing the point, which is that a 5 second delay is added only to some very specific Musk-hated sites, such as Threads, Substack, and until the story blew up in the media, the NYT.
It's absolutely substantiated. I can easily reproduce the phenomenon myself using curl from the command line. The key is to use a web browser User-Agent (curl -A), because it doesn't happen for curl's own User-Agent. The delay is consistent and only affects certain Musk-hated domains such as the NYT and Threads. Here's an example, try it yourself:
curl -v -A 'Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/16.6 Safari/605.1.15' https://t.co/d8KWBqT5v6
Don't need to try it for myself (tho I did try some Times links and their profile link, which doesn't delay btw).
It's entirely possible with the number of domains, and technologies in play, that there's something more going on that causes the delay.
I don't know why you are being downvoted. It is completely unsubstantiated nonsense. Just because some sites seemingly have had a 5 second delay when opening doesn't prove anything. Yes, some of the sites it was happening to Elon might not like. But you have no idea how many sites it was happening on. It could have been affecting more sites Elon likes than he dislikes. But no one can prove otherwise, so it is by definition unsubstantiated.
Even using the word throttle is not an overly apt description. You can still open as many links as you like, there was just some delay. (semantics I know)
Down vote me too, but there is zero proof this was nefariously enacted.
As techies, we should know systems fail often in bizarre ways.
I think he'd listen, if a close friend said something.
Either he's built an "echo chamber" of friends, or—and I hope that's not the case—he doesn't have many good close friends.
Not saying he doesn't have any friends. Just not good ones. It often takes more courage to stand up to a friend than to someone you don't like. A lot of heavy emotions are stirred up.
Money doesn’t buy happiness but it sure does let you flail publicly while desperately seeking validation. Profoundly sad to see someone with so much success and potential do so much harm to themselves and others.
He seems to have a huge need for people to pay attention to him, and in fact by his recent behaviour one might be forgiven for thinking it’s his top priority. Currently, that attention is generally negative, and not even the ‘good’ type of negative; it’s largely derisory. He would probably prefer to be getting positive attention.
Also, people are just getting _bored_. Before long no-one will bother reporting on his bad or embarrassing behaviour, and then where is he?
I'm also a free speech absolutist, and for that reason I think Twitter should be allowed to do this. I think it's dumb for Twitter to do it, but it should be allowed to do it.
free speech absolutist here, but I think that the rules protecting a bar for refusing service to a rowdy drunkard should NOT be used by a monstruous corporate conglomerate, which in the future could encompass google, amazon, apple, facebook and twitter and more together, to refuse service to some technological pariah that suddenly cannot shop online anymore because they made a comment on a social network.
I don't think this is quite the same, though, even if Twitter was preventing links to certain external sites from working outright. This is simply Twitter inserting some specific content between the link and the point when the target site finally loads. This is no different from if when you buy a newspaper at a stand the attendant says "by the way, you shouldn't read that newspaper, it sucks!" Is that allowable? What if the stands are actually a chain and all the attendants are instructed by corporate HQ to say that? IMO all these behaviors should be allowable.
But, like I said, it's dumb. It's no different from doing a global server-side search-and-replace from "New York Times" to "New Poop Times". It's both transparent and childish.
Nor do I think platforms are entitled to freedom from consequences of their actions. If a platform performs a questionable action, people are entitled to their complaints, criticism, and other scrutiny of said action.
It just so happens that Musk performs a lot of these questionable actions, so people consequently complain and criticize proportionally.
I make a ton of jokes about "freeze peach" because the suggestion that legitimate conservative speech on the internet is being muzzled is absurd - if Facebook/Twitter/IG really are the public squares of the internet, then the norm of "talk shit get hit" should really apply.
If he wants to run an unmoderated, right-wing tech site he's more than free to do so.
What he is not free of are his obligations to crack down on calls for violence, trademark and copyright infringement, and to provide fair access to relevant services on the basis of race and sex.
The reason why I don't care is because he's already made it into such a shitshow that everyone I care to listen to has left.
X (FORMERLY Twitter) can do what it wants. If Musk wants to bankroll another conservative echo chamber, it's his right.
You might be overstating his obligations. In the US, calls for violence are illegal if they are imminent and likely. But you're still allowed to advocate for violence in more abstract ways (e.g., "all pedophiles should be shot").
I think this is an all around uneducated position to take. Right wing people are not the champions of civil liberties, which includes freedom of speech and expression.
I am strongly in the camp that the platform previously know as Twitter can do whatever it wants, it isn’t a public square, and I stand by that now. I will also make fun of Elon for being a thin skinned toddler.
Why do you assume everyone who takes that stance is on one side or the other instead of actually holding the position that they state? Do you think all people’s values are so weakly swayed by who they are applied to?
Sure it is a private company but artificially stacking the deck against competition, either business or speech, violates the core promise of a free market democracy: that the best wins. Competition makes the best products for the lowest prices, free discourse allows the most sound ideas to rise to the top.
Secretly screwing with what should be a level playing-field is dishonest and demonstrates a weakness in your products and/or ideas.
Dishonesty has no place in business or public discourse. And in this case is anticompetitive which makes it illegal.
Now that it has come to light you’ll see him scrambling to undo it because it doesn’t stand up to public scrutiny.
> Sure it is a private company but artificially stacking the deck against competition, either business or speech, violates the core promise of a free market democracy: that the best wins.
But Twitter isn’t a free market nor a democracy. It’s a private media company. Private media companies stack the deck every day, it is THEIR deck.
Don’t want a stacked deck? Don’t play their game.
The only place you are (supposed to be) guaranteed a free market and democracy is from the government and with public goods.
I’ve had this argument before here on HN. My end stance is that connections to the internet need to have connectivity guarantees for legal services (and they’re regulated and heavily publicly funded, so I think this is reasonable) so that people can create competitive services.
However cloud providers, private platforms, etc. don’t owe you anything beyond their own T&Cs, which they can obviously change.
Also, open invite to email me at the address in my profile. I have a virtual Sunday morning coffee group that loves to argue over stuff like this and you’re welcome to join and we can talk it out.
Where does that "thin skinned toddler" thing come from? If the Washington Post article is any indication, Musk's likely motive isn't a personal offense. It's that the New York Times published what he called apologia for genocide. Is he a thin skinned toddler for trying to reduce readership in a publication that puts people's lives at risk?
And I don't assume everyone is on a side, but I'm going to assume you are. Why? Because the irrational partisans I've seen on the internet tend to impute the basest and most repugnant motives possible into the actions of those they hate I think we've all seen quite a lot of it, be it "They like firearms because they have small reproductive organs." or "They support immigration because they hate the local working class." All borne out from a childish desire to live in a world of shining heroes and cackling villains.
Now, maybe your toddler comment is borne out of a careful analysis of Musk's psychological state, and if that's so you have my apologies.
> Where does that "thin skinned toddler" thing come from?
Probably when he got so angry at a competitor for launching a rival app that he publicly challenged him to a fight, then backed out when the competitor agreed to do it, then said he was going to go over to his house and kick his ass when he got called out for backing out?
Or maybe it was taking a play from the Trump playbook with the dumb nicknames for people.
Or maybe it was the way he tried to treat Halli.
Or maybe it was the jet tracker thing.
Maybe it was pedo guy years ago.
At the end of the day, I’m not sure which “Elon moment” put him in that category for me. As someone who would have previously considered themselves a fan I’m not mad, just disappointed.
> And I don't assume everyone is on a side, but I'm going to assume you are. Why?
My side is “Twitter is a private company and can do what they like and I can criticize them for their behavior and motives on any platform that will have me.”
Pedo comment was the moment that sealed it for me.
The projection involved in NPD...along with the wealth...casually tossing that accusation. It makes me sick.
Note: I realize NPD is tossed about too frequently but anyone that has had the misfortune of ending up in a long term relationship with a narcassist can spot them.
Wasn't Musk's Twitter caught blacklisting comments regarding Russia's invasion of Ukraine? Sounds awfully hypocritical to defend the right to post unfiltered Russian propaganda while at the same time blacklist comments from Russia's invasion and ongoing genocide of the ukranian people.
Yes we should be able to see inside of Russia and what is going on over there and to see their propaganda because it can be quite informative as to their motivations and goals and what not.
I'm no longer seeing it with NYT but still seeing it with Threads:
curl -v -A 'Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/16.6 Safari/605.1.15' https://t.co/DzIiCFp7Ti
Also still seeing it with Substack:
curl -v -A 'Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/16.6 Safari/605.1.15' https://t.co/6ziYzHwGB0
(Note that I just quickly grabbed a random substack.com link from Twitter search. I don't endorse and indeed haven't read the contents.)
Reading your post makes me think of the fraud accusations against the Wall Street Journal made by YouTube content creators a few years back. [1]
I doubt any website is blacklisted at all. Web-scale systems behave in weird and unexpected ways. That's it.
[1] For those who missed that silly 'scandal': The content creators that earned their living from making videos on YouTube were somehow unaware that the view counts displayed by that website were not strictly consistent. Because of that they ended up accusing a Wall Street Journal reporter (who was writing a story that happened to threaten their income) of falsifying some screenshots and videos.
Third party intermediaries, a.k.a. so-called "tech" companies, are a PITA. This proxying of URLs, i.e., redirecting through the intermediary's servers, is sadly commonplace, providing the intermediary with a wealth of data on what external links are followed by computer users leaving the so-called "tech" company websites. Facebook does it. Google does it with Google News. IIRC, Facebook has defended the practice as being some sort of safety measure for Facebook users. If true, that's great, but are there any legally-enforceable limits on collection of data on peoples' browsing habits in the process, or its subsequent use. Nope.
Here, we see how this redirection of external URLs can easily be used to manipulate and frustrate. Alongside of Facebook and Google's quarrels with certain governments trying to protect their news media, and subsequent removal of news for certain audiences, it's another example of so-called "tech" companies interfering with computers users' access to news. IMHO, we need to get away from using these self-interested intermediaries and start getting news directly from its sources.
To be clear, the issue IMO is not why a so-called "tech" company intermediary might interfere with computer users trying access news, it is the fact that they can.
90 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 115 ms ] thread[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act
That said, I'm no expert and was just using it as an example.
He's legally free to do this, but morally is a whole other thing.
Its especially worthwhile because Musk sold himself as an absolutist of a view of free speech in which platforms like Twitter were not exercisers of free speech but actors whose decision to shape and bias content violated their users rights to free speech.
Even though you can argue the free speech angle regarding news publications such as the new York times, I'm not so sure if blacklisting links to competitors such as Threads is something that sits well with antitrust agencies.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37130060
> 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.
It appears this throttling is based in part on the useragent since at least one HN comment noted that the throttling was observed when using curl spoofing a mozilla user agent.
Meaning, that the delay, which only affects a few specific websites that are either known X competitors or perceived Musk antagonists, is deliberate.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37136776
Even using the word throttle is not an overly apt description. You can still open as many links as you like, there was just some delay. (semantics I know)
Down vote me too, but there is zero proof this was nefariously enacted.
As techies, we should know systems fail often in bizarre ways.
Half the comments in the previous thread were also techies nerdsniped into assuming Hanlon's Razor, and failing.
For what it's worth, nytimes.com links in t.co load at normal speed for me right now.
Either he's built an "echo chamber" of friends, or—and I hope that's not the case—he doesn't have many good close friends.
Not saying he doesn't have any friends. Just not good ones. It often takes more courage to stand up to a friend than to someone you don't like. A lot of heavy emotions are stirred up.
He needs a Neville Longbottom in his life.
Also, people are just getting _bored_. Before long no-one will bother reporting on his bad or embarrassing behaviour, and then where is he?
If the past is any indication, starting a bunch more revolutionary companies?
But apparently they are your research assistant?
You’re the one making a claim. The burden of proof is on you. Claims which are made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
The New York Times isn’t really a competitor, so the government shouldn’t step in to stop that. Nevertheless, it’s still dumb as shit
But, like I said, it's dumb. It's no different from doing a global server-side search-and-replace from "New York Times" to "New Poop Times". It's both transparent and childish.
It just so happens that Musk performs a lot of these questionable actions, so people consequently complain and criticize proportionally.
If he wants to run an unmoderated, right-wing tech site he's more than free to do so.
What he is not free of are his obligations to crack down on calls for violence, trademark and copyright infringement, and to provide fair access to relevant services on the basis of race and sex.
The reason why I don't care is because he's already made it into such a shitshow that everyone I care to listen to has left.
X (FORMERLY Twitter) can do what it wants. If Musk wants to bankroll another conservative echo chamber, it's his right.
He should really find something else to work on.
Why do you assume everyone who takes that stance is on one side or the other instead of actually holding the position that they state? Do you think all people’s values are so weakly swayed by who they are applied to?
All not. Most yes. This summarizes almost the entirety of modern social media and traditional media discussion.
Sure it is a private company but artificially stacking the deck against competition, either business or speech, violates the core promise of a free market democracy: that the best wins. Competition makes the best products for the lowest prices, free discourse allows the most sound ideas to rise to the top.
Secretly screwing with what should be a level playing-field is dishonest and demonstrates a weakness in your products and/or ideas.
Dishonesty has no place in business or public discourse. And in this case is anticompetitive which makes it illegal.
Now that it has come to light you’ll see him scrambling to undo it because it doesn’t stand up to public scrutiny.
But Twitter isn’t a free market nor a democracy. It’s a private media company. Private media companies stack the deck every day, it is THEIR deck.
Don’t want a stacked deck? Don’t play their game.
The only place you are (supposed to be) guaranteed a free market and democracy is from the government and with public goods.
I’ve had this argument before here on HN. My end stance is that connections to the internet need to have connectivity guarantees for legal services (and they’re regulated and heavily publicly funded, so I think this is reasonable) so that people can create competitive services.
However cloud providers, private platforms, etc. don’t owe you anything beyond their own T&Cs, which they can obviously change.
Also, open invite to email me at the address in my profile. I have a virtual Sunday morning coffee group that loves to argue over stuff like this and you’re welcome to join and we can talk it out.
And I don't assume everyone is on a side, but I'm going to assume you are. Why? Because the irrational partisans I've seen on the internet tend to impute the basest and most repugnant motives possible into the actions of those they hate I think we've all seen quite a lot of it, be it "They like firearms because they have small reproductive organs." or "They support immigration because they hate the local working class." All borne out from a childish desire to live in a world of shining heroes and cackling villains.
Now, maybe your toddler comment is borne out of a careful analysis of Musk's psychological state, and if that's so you have my apologies.
Probably when he got so angry at a competitor for launching a rival app that he publicly challenged him to a fight, then backed out when the competitor agreed to do it, then said he was going to go over to his house and kick his ass when he got called out for backing out?
Or maybe it was taking a play from the Trump playbook with the dumb nicknames for people.
Or maybe it was the way he tried to treat Halli.
Or maybe it was the jet tracker thing.
Maybe it was pedo guy years ago.
At the end of the day, I’m not sure which “Elon moment” put him in that category for me. As someone who would have previously considered themselves a fan I’m not mad, just disappointed.
> And I don't assume everyone is on a side, but I'm going to assume you are. Why?
My side is “Twitter is a private company and can do what they like and I can criticize them for their behavior and motives on any platform that will have me.”
The projection involved in NPD...along with the wealth...casually tossing that accusation. It makes me sick.
Note: I realize NPD is tossed about too frequently but anyone that has had the misfortune of ending up in a long term relationship with a narcassist can spot them.
This just raises further questions!
I doubt any website is blacklisted at all. Web-scale systems behave in weird and unexpected ways. That's it.
[1] For those who missed that silly 'scandal': The content creators that earned their living from making videos on YouTube were somehow unaware that the view counts displayed by that website were not strictly consistent. Because of that they ended up accusing a Wall Street Journal reporter (who was writing a story that happened to threaten their income) of falsifying some screenshots and videos.
X has started reversing the throttling on some of the sites, including NYTimes
Discussions on HN: (61-comments - 2023-08-16) : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37141478
Twitter post archive: https://archive.is/PW3eG
Here, we see how this redirection of external URLs can easily be used to manipulate and frustrate. Alongside of Facebook and Google's quarrels with certain governments trying to protect their news media, and subsequent removal of news for certain audiences, it's another example of so-called "tech" companies interfering with computers users' access to news. IMHO, we need to get away from using these self-interested intermediaries and start getting news directly from its sources.
To be clear, the issue IMO is not why a so-called "tech" company intermediary might interfere with computer users trying access news, it is the fact that they can.