Elon Musk’s X allegedly hampered content from news sites and rivals the entrepreneur has criticised.
The platform formerly known as Twitter reportedly slowed down the speed with which users could open links from The New York Times, Reuters, Instagram and Facebook.
Multiple reports claimed the delay lasted up to five seconds for the affected sites, potentially deterring users from accessing them.
The issue was originally flagged on Tuesday by a user on the Hacker News forum, who claimed to have been tracking it since August 4. That’s the same day Musk labelled The New York Times a "racial genocide apologist" in response to its reporting on South Africa.
Both The Washington Post and Reuters separately confirmed the lag in tests. On Wednesday, links from some of the targeted websites appeared to be working correctly. Neither X nor Musk have addressed the accusations.
The gap also affected rival social media platforms such as BlueSky, Mastodon, Substack and Meta-owned Threads.
Musk has been in a feud with Meta boss Zuckerberg, and the billionaires have suggested the beef could be settled with a charity cage match. Though it remains to be seen if the proposed brawl is little more than mere posturing and a grand publicity stunt.
Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, posted on Bluesky on Tuesday that the delays seemed like “one of those things that seems too crazy to be true, even for Twitter.”
Roth added that he had verified the delays through his own tests. “Delays are annoying enough, even subconsciously, to drive people away,” he said.
Twitter has long been a major source for news thanks to its prominence among publishers and journalists. Musk, a self-professed free speech absolutist who acquired the platform in October, has used the site to air his grievances.
In April, he removed the “verified” badge from The New York Times account, potentially making it harder to distinguish from impersonators.
X provoked a brief backlash in December after banning links to rival social media services, including Facebook, Instagram and Mastodon – a decision that was later reversed.
The platform has also suffered numerous outages and glitches since Musk axed about 3,900 employees as part of cost-cutting measures.
