I will no longer be posting on the social media site X, formerly known as Twitter. The decision to leave is being forced upon me due to the deterioration of the website. I no longer want to contribute to their platform.

In my apolitical view, the site has been overrun by crypto scams, porn bots, conspiracy theories, racism, and misogyny. It is has become nearly impossible to have any productive conversations. It is a cesspool of rage-baiting content made to drive engagement. It is an angry platform driven by division and controversy. Reading the site makes your day worse. It makes you want to start disliking your hobbies because the worst conversations around them become sensationalized.

If you can somehow get past that, then there is their targeted and increasingly rampant attack on external websites, like mine, through the disgusting practice of link suppression.

It started last year when I learned more about the site’s increasing concerted effort to suppress links. Here is an example of how posting a link to X works.

First, I add a link to my blog post in an X post. I am sharing my hard work, something that should be celebrated by X because I am providing content to them for free.

When you post a link, X applies a link shortener to that link automatically. You can’t remove it. The link changes from tacticsjournal.com to a t.co (Twitter) domain URL.

When this was implemented over a decade ago by the previous owners, the purpose for that link shortener was to provide stats to Twitter to help them measure how many people click on that link on their end. It was annoying because it caused the page to load slower. When you clicked on the link from Twitter, your browser loaded the t.co link, and then it had to redirect you to tacticsjournal.com. The difference in loading times compared to directly linking to the intended destination URL was minimal at the time.

Things changed in the past year or more.

In September of 2023, The Markup confirmed the fears many in the community had that X was throttling links using their link shortener. And not just throttling all links equally, which is bad enough as it is; they targeted any specific domain name they liked, like Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, Substack, plus other news organizations.

The Markup:

On August 15, The Washington Post reported that X had slowed by about five seconds traffic to websites that had been criticized by owner Elon Musk, including the competing platforms identified by The Markup and media properties like The New York Times and Reuters. The Post also reported that X reversed some of the throttling after its story was published.

Slowing traffic to websites can harm the companies that run the sites and the people who use them. Even a 2.5-second delay after clicking a link can feel extremely slow to users, potentially discouraging them from waiting around for content to load. A 2017 Google study found that the probability of a user “bouncing,” or abandoning a site, increased 32% when page load times increased to three seconds from one second. Substack co-founders Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie, and Jairaj Seth wrote that they hope X reverses its decision to impose a delay on Substack links. “Writers cannot build sustainable businesses if their connection to their audience depends on unreliable platforms that have proven they are willing to make changes that are hostile to the people who use them,” they said in an email. Meta and Bluesky did not respond to a request for comment.

The Markup ran tests, tests you can still run for yourself in that article I linked, that to this day slow down the loading speeds of links using their link shortener. You can notice right now when you are using X’s website or app.

This practice of throttling links has been expanding since then. They can target whoever they like; they can decide to target all links theoretically. It has affected my blog, and it lowers viewership greatly.

Once people learned about this, I thought that would be the turning point for everyone to leave X, but it wasn’t.

X does not want people to leave for an external website because in their mind, that means the user will never come back. But the nefarious targeted attacks on specific domains did not stop at just throttling links.

It has been confirmed by many sources, after X’s algorithm was made open-source, and by Elon Musk himself, that X docks you points on your post, in their algorithm, if you include a link. They limit it from being seen by your own followers and those that it could be recommended to. That shrinks your audience further, and people miss posts because they simply don’t show up in their feed.

What is the point of contributing to this website if my content is not valued and not being shared with the people that follow me or to a greater audience?

The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), the largest organization of journalists in Europe, representing over 295,000 journalists in 44 countries, has announced that it will stop posting content on X.

President of the EFJ, Maja Sever:

We cannot continue to participate in the social network feed of a man who proclaims the death of the media and therefore of journalists.

The social media site X has become the preferred vector for conspiracy theories, racism, far-right ideas and misogynistic rhetoric.

They join The Guardian and many other European news outlets:

We think that the benefits of being on X are now outweighed by the negatives and that resources could be better used promoting our journalism elsewhere.

This is something we have been considering for a while, given the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism.

If nothing changes, more and more people will leave in the coming months. Journalists and writers are leaving. News organizations are leaving. Creators are leaving. And then all they will be left with are those that enjoy a constant stream of draining chaos.

If I do want to get real-time news, now I go to Bluesky. A rapidly growing social media platform that has very early Twitter vibes, is developer and creator friendly, and it supports the open web. They want you to share links. During the exodus that occurred over the past two months, Bluesky’s user base has quickly grown to nearly 26 million users. That is where everyone is going. The football community is there, the football tactics community is there, the reporters are there, and many other communities are moving there. The conversations are more civilized; they have better moderation organized by the community and controlled by you, not a company. Developers are flocking to Bluesky to create third-party apps, community-run feed algorithms, and more.

It is very hard to leave the 35,900 Twitter followers behind. I put in a lot of work to grow that audience, and I have a lot of relationships I’d like to keep. But I don’t want to contribute to X’s platform anymore. I am happy to report that the traffic to my site from outside of X has surpassed the traffic I got from X, despite the fact that my follower count is significantly smaller on all other social media platforms.

How to follow the Tactics Journal

If you like my writing, the most reliable way to follow the Tactics Journal is by subscribing via RSS. Get a news reader app like NetNewsWire, and then add my feed https://tacticsjournal.com/feed to receive posts.

The second most reliable way to follow the Tactics Journal is by email.

Subscribe

Enter your email, hit subscribe. You’ll get my next post sent directly to your inbox when it is published. No spam, ever. I promise.

If you prefer to follow the Tactics Journal on social media, here is where you can find me:

Bluesky: @tacticsjournal.com

Threads: @tacticsjournal

Facebook: https://facebook.com/TacticsJournal

YouTube: https://youtube.com/@TacticsJournal

The Tactics Journal has a community on Discord where you can discuss football tactics with other readers. Join our community.

Social media sites like X will come and go, but they have one thing in common: almost all of their owners are unlikeable. We get to choose who gets our time and attention. I have always advocated for others to make their own blog, own their ideas. Don’t rely on social media to share and store your work.