Twitter has been accused of deliberately restricting Telegram and Mastodon
Twitter does not return any results for a Telegram request. And some Mastodon-related tweets are marked with a warning banner.
Unsuccessful keyword searches and messages posted by Internet users now accompanied by a warning attachment. Here are some funny observations made by several netizens on Twitter in the last few hours. Observations that the editorial staff of Numerama can also make.
No results with Telegram
First discovery: Searches with the keyword Telegram return no results. Both on the website and on the mobile app (Android or iOS), Twitter displays an error message: ” An error occurred. Try reloading the page “. A temporary banner also appears, indicating this request ” Not reliable “.
no explanation is given by official twitter support account As of December 12. Despite being the new head of the social network since the end of October, Elon Musk did not mention the issue of Telegram. The subject is also not visible. Twitter help pages and in its community rulesaccording to our findings.
Telegram is a mobile instant messenger available on Android and iOS. It’s similar to solutions like Signal or WhatsApp: you can start one-on-one or group discussions, transfer documents and files, record videos, and more. It has the optional ability to encrypt messages end-to-end.
Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, did not react to the observations of Internet users. on Twitter and the Russian on Telegram has never commented on Twitter politics or Elon Musk’s actions—no mention of either going back to the past few months, anyway. The hypothesis of a failed search because other queries have passed must also be ruled out.
Warning banner
A second observation worries netizens on US-only Twitter: Posts that mention Mastodon, some of which appear with a warning banner. An example is a tweet from Joshua Topolsky, a journalist and founder of The Verge and several well-known publications.
The tweet in question reads: I will definitely be posting less here. I can’t tell you how much I’m enjoying Mastodon and I strongly suggest you join the team there – if you have any questions about it, I’ll be happy to answer them. Meet me there! “. A link to his Mastodon profile is also available.
Joshua Topolski then wrote another message shares an image of his tweet to indicate the presence of this banner announcing the following message: ” We’ve warned you that this tweet may contain sensitive content “. This warning also appears when a tweet is integrated into an article to hide the link to the profile.
Again, no explanation is given by Elon Musk or Twitter on any account or support page. Joshua Topolsky suggests deliberate action by Twitter, but offers no evidence. According to him, this could be a sign that the migration from Twitter to Mastodon will be relatively significant. And Twitter would be worried.
Mastodon appears to be more of a Twitter competitor than Telegram, with a relatively similar operation, except that the platform is completely decentralized. Mastodon is organized into “instances”, which are servers managed by one or more individuals. Each example follows moderation rules that can be more or less strict.
These banners are not publicly available (yet) in France, as certain services are currently reserved for Americans only – such as the recent relaunch of a paid subscription that comes with ID verification. We reached out to Twitter for clarification, but the social network did not respond at the time of publication.
