Time to check in on the rebrand at X (formerly Twitter), and how X’s slendered down engineering group is going about upgrading all of the numerous bird-related referrals in the app.
Yeah, it’s apparently not going terrific.
According to a report from Mashable, X’s most current action on this front hasactually been to set up an automated replacement variable on iOS, so that whenever a user consistsof a referral to “twitter.com” in a post in the app, the system immediately updates it to “x.com” rather.
So if you post something to X like: “Check out my profile at twitter.com/socialmedia2day”, on iOS, it’ll now checkout as: “Check out my profile at x.com/socialmedia2day”, with the system immediately altering the recommendation.
Seems like an easy way to get more people referring to x.com, ideal?
Well, the issue, as anumberof users rightaway worked out, is that it relates to any recommendation to “x.com”, regardless of the surrounding context. So if you were to post something like “netflitwitter.com”, the brand-new system will instantly upgrade that to “netflix.com” based on this code. The real URL itself, nevertheless, will keep referring to the initial domain that you connected to.
In other words, the text upgrade will modification the screen of the URL in the app, however it won’t modification the link. So you can essentially set up any site with “twitter.com” in it, understanding that it’ll be relabelled as “x.com”, then dupe individuals into clicking through on it, thinking that they’re going to a absolutely various website.
Which is a fraudsters dream, and will lead to numerous, lotsof deceptive clicks.
According to Mashable, X hasactually upgraded the procedure to address at least some of the more bothersome abuses. But they sanctuary’t altered all of them, and the system is still upgrading URL listings to from “twitter.com” to “x.com” rather.
Though why this is even a focus is complicated, thinkingabout that practically all of X’s operates still refer to “twitter.com” either method.
Indeed, looking at X’s desktop design, right now, all of the operates refer to a“twitter.com” link:
Even X’s Grok chatbot is presently hosted at “https://twitter.com/i/grok”. So I’m not sur