The delayed websites include X’s online rivals Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky and Substack as well as Reuters and the New York Times, all of which Musk previously has singled out for ridicule or attack.
I cannot believe that there are companies and non-wingnuts who are still actively using that site at this point. Like maybe at the start it was ha-ha funny watching him flail about with code printouts and unplugging random microservices leading to outages, but I feel like the moment he started actively funneling money to alt-right knuckleheads and human traffickers should have been enough of a kick in the pants for even folks heavily reliant on the platform to make their exit.
at this point, with twitter being inaccessible to non logged in user, the 'public square' thing is totally done,. Get off twitter now. There are alternatives.
On Tuesday afternoon, hours after this story was first published, X began reversing the throttling on some of the sites, dropping the delay times back to zero. It was unknown if all the throttled websites had normal service restored.
Who there didn't see that coming? They thought nobody was gonna notice 5s delays on NYT links?
That new CEO must be locked in a cage somewhere at this point because she is definitely not calling the shots on this, or "X", or any of the other nonsense that's still been occurring because only one billionaire egomaniac is capable of this absolute fucking trainwreck.
These companies either need to rip the bandaid off and leave Twitter or, at least, start establishing themselves elsewhere and encourage their users to find the content wherever that place is.
There are those of us who were on the Internet before the capital showed up, and all of us said that it was a bad idea to use these corporate silos, that there were implications that were not great to handing what we knew would one day be the public square over to private interests. We were not listened to, of course, and for the thirty years that the government kept the house of cards propped up with zero interest they created a real illusion that it might actually work.
But maybe I have to reassess Elon. I have heretofore considered him something of a bad man, a Senator Palpatine with his "saving the world through capitalism" schtick, but with an Emperor lurking in his twisted mind. And here we have that very Emperor, taking off the mask. But perhaps... perhaps... perhaps Musk is actually Vader. Perhaps in revealing, to all with eyes to see, the very problems we Libre'd zealots have been crying out in the wilderness about, perhaps he is the one who will restore balance to the Internet.
Nah he's just an apartheid rich boy who talked a good line while he could keep pulling free money out of the bag, but now that he has to put money back in the bag he's taking whatever work he can get.