X caught blocking links to NPR, claiming the news site may be 'unsafe'

Summary of article: A single NPR link got automatically flagged by X to display a warning after NPR changed the URL for an unknown reason. It was reported to X who said it was a false positive and corrected it.

And you know why this crap will continue?

Because you guys will go on twitter to discuss this.

Back in 2023:

>t.co is adding a five-second delay to some domains

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37130060

I miss the old, funky Twitter. Back before the platform itself was actively trying to push people away from it.

My Mastodon feed keeps improving. Maybe someday it'll get there.

I like NPR but I wonder why their slugs have that weird bit of code after the date/time

"nx-s1-5092087" looks like a random string that might trigger some automated firewalls or checks

Can someone explain to an outsider how "state funded" NPR is, if at all? Is it like BBC, DW, .. or more like CNN/FoxNews? And does its political stance change between governments?

I deleted my Twitter account overa year ago. I was not liking the changes. Stories like this only confirm my decison to be right.

The title is misleading. X isn’t blocking NPR, but was displaying a warning about a potentially unsafe link on one article from NPR. I don’t see any evidence that there is something malicious here; it could just be some automation acting incorrectly. NPR did change the URL and title of the article, by the way, and I wonder if that triggered something.

All that said, I am against any type of link blocking or warning functionality in the first place. This type of message is at best patronizing and at worst, censorship. Reddit does this, blocking links to various domains entirely or shadow banning submissions or comments with those links. I have seen their automation do this even in more nuanced ways, for example blocking certain Wikipedia links to articles that they’ve deemed unacceptable, instead of the whole domain. Other social media - including Twitter pre-acquisition, Meta, etc - all variously show such warnings from time to time or block certain domains entirely, both in submissions/posts and comments.

In my experience, the blocking on those platforms (not warnings but outright blocks) has had a political bias towards the left and against moderate or right wing views across these platforms. I find it hypocritical that people who have supported over the top censorship for years are now so offended and upset when it happens on Twitter/X, even if it is accidental and not malicious. Regardless, I think Twitter/X does owe an explanation in such situations and should act quickly to correct it.