At this point, we really are just waiting for the next petty thing that Elon Musk does. It has gone from entertaining until it gets old, and becomes entertaining again. Just when we thought that we'd had our fill of tech billionaire whims such as Musk planning to show up in Zuck's house to fight, we get yet another one.
X is Slowing Down Access to Threads, Bluesky
It's no secret that Elon Musk does not like Threads. After all, it started a whole thing that led to both Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk agreeing to a cage match. Users have noticed that there have been five-second delays when selecting a link that leads to the platform through X.
Threads is not the only social media site that has been affected. So far, the same delays are seen with Bluesky, Instagram, Facebook, Reuters, Substack, and The New York Times. Evidently, three sites are products of Meta.
There are also a couple of news outlets in the mix, given that Musk has publicly criticized the integrity of certain publications. As mentioned in Tech Crunch, the delay in traffic for these sites could be a way to take away traffic and ad revenue from the companies.
People might be less interested in viewing other links if it takes more time to open them. Users have tested whether the delay impacts other sites as well but upon testing, news organizations and streaming platforms like Fox News and YouTube load at relatively normal speeds.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reacted to the phenomenon with a "thinking face" emoji on Threads. The tension between the two tech billionaires has been high especially since Meta released its own microblogging social media platform.
Twitter's former head of trust and safety posted on Bluesky that the delays were one of the things that seemed "too crazy to be true," but was convinced after it took five seconds for Chrome to receive 650 bytes of data, according to the report.
Musk's Infamous Decisions Affecting X
The Tesla CEO is not known for separating his personal grievances and beliefs from the business. In fact, some of his decisions contributed to X's slow downfall, including his ideal social media platform where people were free to say anything they want.
This resulted in major advertisers leaving the platform in fear that their products would be displayed adjacent to unsavory content. Musk, predictably, responded by saying that he would conduct a "thermonuclear name and shame" to call out the advertisers who want to exit X.
Back in December 2022, Elon Musk also blocked certain sites like Mastodon from what was then called Twitter, seeing the social networking site as a competitor, as mentioned in CNN, and did so with links to Substack and Threads as well.
Through all the decisions that the tech billionaire made after acquiring Twitter, there is little surprise left for people. Some would argue and agree that it's his decisions that cause the slow decay of the once-loved microblogging platform.
