X, the Elon Musk-owned platform formerly known as Twitter, is marking some links to news organization NPR’s website as “unsafe” when users click through to read the latest story about an altercation between a Trump campaign staffer and an Arlington National Cemetery employee. The warning being displayed is typically applied to malicious links, like those containing malware, and other types of misleading content or spam. However, in this case, the web page being blocked is an NPR news report, raising questions about whether or not Musk’s X is actively trying to stop the news story from spreading.
On Thursday X users began to notice that a link to the NPR story about the Arlington Cemetery event, when clicked, would display the following message: “Warning: this link may be unsafe” followed by the URL of the web page in question, https://npr.org/2024/08/29/nx-s1-5092087/trump-arlington-cemetery-altercation-tiktok.
Instead of being taken to the website, the warning encourages them to go “back to the previous page” by clicking the big blue button. To read the news story, users would have to click on the small text below that reads, “Ignore this warning and continue.”
It’s not immediately clear why NPR’s news site would have triggered this warning, nor why it would show up on specifically this story.
The message warns X users:
The link you are trying to access has been identified by X or our partners as being potentially spammy or unsafe, in accordance with X’s URL Policy. This link could fall into any of the below categories:
- malicious links that could steal personal information or harm electronic devices
- spammy links that mislead people or disrupt their experience
- violent or misleading content that could lead to real-world harm
- certain categories of content that, if posted directly on X, are a violation of the X Rules
It does appear that NPR changed the URL from https://npr.org/2024/08/29/nx-s1-5092087/trump-arlington-cemetery-altercation-tiktok to https://www.npr.org/2024/08/29/nx-s1-5092087/trump-arlington-cemetery-altercation-video, but whether that’s in response to the link being blocked or whether some other issue may have falsely triggered the malicious link warning is not yet known.
In any event, the move further muddies X’s image as a platform for free speech, which could drive more users to competitors like open source Mastodon, social networking startup Bluesky, Meta’s Threads and others.
NPR did not immediately return a request for comment and X typically longer replies to media requests for comment under Musk’s leadership. It did, however, reply to NPR in this case later this afternoon, and said that the link was marked as a “false positive” and had been corrected.
This is not the first time there’s been an incident between NPR and X. The news organization last year chose to abandon X, then called Twitter, after Musk had the outlet labeled as “state-affiliated media” — a label Twitter had previously used for propaganda outlets like those in Russia and China. It has not officially returned.
More recently, Musk has used X’s platform to showcase his support for Trump, even hosting an online conversation with the former president on X Spaces earlier this month. The service was not able to handle the traffic, however, and crashed.
Story updated, 8/29/24, 2 PM ET to include X comment to NPR.
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