Analysis: Twitter/X Is Throttling Traffic To The NY Times

Semafor reports:

X, Elon Musk’s social media platform formerly known as Twitter, appears to be attempting to limit its users’ access to The New York Times. Since late July, engagement on X posts linking to the New York Times has dropped dramatically.

The drop in shares and other engagement on tweets with Times links is abrupt, and is not reflected in links to similar news organizations including CNN, the Washington Post, and the BBC, according to NewsWhip’s data on 300,000 influential users of X.

The drop in engagement in Times posts seems isolated to X: NewsWhip data showed that engagement with Times links shared on Facebook remained consistent relative to other outlets.

Read the full article. The piece notes that recent posts by Obama which linked to NYT pieces on healthcare got the lowest engagement of his post-presidency posts.

🟡 SCOOP: X, Elon Musk’s social media platform formerly known as Twitter, appears to be attempting to limit its users’ access to The New York Times, @maxwelltani reports.https://t.co/hVkF3x5L15

— Semafor (@semafor) September 11, 2023