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Google decimates Twitter search results after Elon Musk imposes limits on reading tweets (www.rawstory.com)

submitted 1 year ago by DevCat@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Google has reportedly removed much of Twitter's links from its search results after the social network's owner Elon Musk announced reading tweets would be limited.

Search Engine Roundtable found that Google had removed 52% of Twitter links since the crackdown began last week. Twitter now blocks users who are not logged in and sets limits on reading tweets.

According to Barry Schwartz, Google reported 471 million Twitter URLs as of Friday. But by Monday morning, that number had plummeted to 227 million.

"For normal indexing of these Twitter URLs, it seems like these tweets are dropping out of the sky," Schwartz wrote.

Platformer reported last month that Twitter refused to pay its bill for Google Cloud services.

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[–] Snapz@lemmy.world 101 points 1 year ago (29 children)

Twitter was an important unifying communications tool during the Arab Spring. The Arab spring was a threat to biz as usual in places like Saudi Arabia. The second largest investor in Twitter is Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia killed and dismembered a journalist from the US, more or less in plain sight. Elon is now killing and dismembering Twitter in plain sight to limit its power as a unifying tool that stands as a demonstrable, active threat to capitalism and oligarchs around the world.

Billionaires do favors for other billionaires. It's part of why spez is trying to tank Reddit. Remember how dangerous Reddit was to capitalism's status quo around the time of GME/Robinhood/Antiwork recently.

The specific moment we're in right now is meant to shatter consolidated organizing power on Reddit as we splinter into several smaller alternative platforms (or for some, disconnect entirely). Not saying we shouldn't be in Lemmy, but calling out the larger reality of the moment.

Billionaires do favors for other billionaires.

[–] nparkinglot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I’m glad I’m not the only person thinking about this. I had no idea about the Saudis owning Twitter like that. All decisions made by the rich are for Money^TM^. Usually it’s Money^TM^ in either the form of growth (profit, short term) or investment (power, stability, long term). Some of spezs actions are easily explained by Money^TM^ when you take into account LLMs mining reddit. But that does not explain being so insanely hardline with their API. There was absolutely a resolution to that that was profitable and didn’t continue giving away “their” information for free. This is where I think a 3rd Money^TM^ comes into play: existential investments. These are actions they take to ensure the other two forms of Money^TM^ continue to function the way they want them to. Such as tanking the two most significant online tools for organizing collective action against them.

[–] Strangle@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Decisions at that level are made for power. Sometimes money is part of that

[–] nparkinglot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago

I mean, yes, but I think “sometimes” really underestimates role money plays in a capitalist world. Money is power. People who tell you otherwise are trying to sell you something.

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