News that is hardly surprising: A new report finds that X is throttling links to rival social media apps, as well as news outlets that owner Elon Musk doesn't like, which could be of relevance for your posting strategy in the app.

For the most part, it's just more shenanigans from the reformered Twitter app that still loudly proclaims free speech everywhere while not practicing said free speech in its actions. But maybe it's "free speech" as Elon sees it. And while his position in opposition to feeding traffic to competitors does have some very real business sense, there seems to be a disconnect between being a "free speech absolutist" and controlling what does and doesn't get reach in his app.

But I digress.

As mentioned above, from a social media marketing perspective, note that these changes might affect the approach you are taking.

To start with, X is apparently now throttling loading times for links to The New York Times and Reuters, among other media outlets that have been regularly singled out for criticism by Elon in his posts.

"As noted by The Washington Post:

"The delay affected the t.co domain, a link-shortening service that X uses to process every link posted to the website. Traffic is routed through the domain, allowing X to track, and, in this case, throttle, activity to the target website, potentially taking away traffic and ad revenue from businesses Musk personally dislikes."

Subsequent to these articles, there have been newer accounts of those delays no longer being an issue, although X has provided no statement on why the delay was implemented in the first place, nor whether it's been permanently removed.

Perhaps it's gone now, but it's interesting to note that links to publishers that Elon himself does not like may be less effective at times.

A brief snapshot of some of the publishers that Elon has personally attacked lately:

The New York Times
Reuters
The Guardian
Bloomberg
The Wall Street Journal
BBC
There are many more, but for a guide note, based on recent, overt criticisms, these ones could feature in Elon's crosshairs for restrictions, if X is to continue with the same.

In addition, its recent algorithm updates limit the reach of every post containing an external link. Some social media managers are now trying ways to bypass this: they're posting a description of the article, with an image, in the first post of a thread, and then adding a linked post using the article URL in a reply beneath. That may lead to greater amplification, since it is a mixture of an image post that contains the replied post, both of which are being amplified by the algorithm, but there is still no concrete proof on this yet, (we are testing this method at SMT).

Another significant factor that might be of much more crucial interest to social media administrators, on the other hand, is that links to competing social networks are also throttled.
This has not been removed and has been verified by Musk. All external links to competitor social media apps inside X posts, such as Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, and Substack are all being capped to varying extents.
reviewing the newest X algorithm code, even unbranded mentions of competitor apps may incur a reach penalty, so you likely do not want to link to other apps where possible either.

Yeah, it's not free and open, although, as noted, giving what Elon sees as free promotion to rivals is also, understandably, not ideal for X. But you can't have it both ways. You can't say that X is the most free-speech-aligned app and then restrict the reach to certain outlets and URLs.

That is precisely what the X team has accused former Twitter management of, and yet now it is doing precisely the same thing, but with a different bias in approach.

Not that it matters, of course. Elon's ardent followers will support him to the nth degree in everything he does, and his opponents, conversely, will remain opposed on similar lines. It is, however, what actually matters: it is the user experience at the bottom of things, and throttling competitors and third-party developers cannot be the best tactic in this regard.

But Elon says the platform is seeing record usage and that advertisers are coming back.

Perhaps that's true. I don't know, since X keeps no official figures.

But we'll soon find out the other way.