Elon Musk confirmed the restriction of visibility of posts with external links on social network X. The network's algorithm deliberately reduces the reach of posts with hyperlinks to keep users on the platform.
The American billionaire, owner of SpaceX and Tesla, Elon Musk, has admitted that he limits the ability of people to spread external news on the social network X, UNN reports, citing Independent.
Details
Users have noticed that social media company X, owned by Elon Musk, is slowing down traffic to other websites by suppressing any posts that contain external links. However, the businessman himself confirmed this fact. For example, Paul Graham, an influential tech investor and essayist, complained on Sunday that X had “deprioritized tweets with links,” saying it made it difficult to “find out what's going on.
Just write a description in the main post and put a link in the reply. It will simply stop linking “lazily”
– Musk replied.
Paul Graham then asked why it would be less “lazy” for him to link to one of his essays in a reply rather than the original post, but he never received an answer. In addition, journalists and analysts have long since discovered that X's ordering and recommendation algorithms have penalized posts with hyperlinks. Elon Musk admitted that this was true back in October last year.
Our algorithm tries to optimize the time spent on X, so links don't attract as much attention because less time is spent if people click far away
– Musk said at the time.
When Elon Musk acquired Twitter, which he later renamed X, he said he planned to completely change the social network's policies and introduce a new economy on the platform. All this to encourage people to post on X rather than any other social network.
The hyperlinking policy is consistent with Elon Musk's longstanding hostility to traditional media, which has often reported on the misconduct of many of his companies.
Recall
X users are sharing medical images with Grok chatbot on a massive scale at the urging of Elon Musk. Experts warn of privacy risks, as such data is not protected by federal law.