Scripting News: Wednesday, October 4, 2023
Wednesday, October 4, 2023 Twitter never did links anyway # Today's debate is whether Elon Musk is out to strangle journalism by algorithmically downplaying links somehow. But that isn't what he said. What he actually said is that in Twitter people don't click on links. This is observable. I've known this for years as I tried to arrange it so people could read my blog posts where ever they wanted, and finally in 2017 gave up because it was impossible. Even if Twitter had completely dropped the character limit then, it still wouldn't have been possible. # Why don't people click on links? Probably because the user experience is a nightmare. First you have to turn off your add blocker to even see the article, and then you have to subscribe to the pub to read this one article. So you hit the back button and if you're like me you remember never again to click on links in Twitter. That happened long before Musk arrived. # Also ...