It's been known for some time that Twitter has been messing with tweets that link to The New York Times and other media disliked by Elon Musk, but Semafor decided to science it out—these stories tend to come and go without much substance to them. The conclusion, based on data provided by analytics company NewsWhip, is that links to the Times are indeed heavily suppressed and relatively little traffic goes from Twitter to nytimes.com anymore.
Since late July, engagement on X posts linking to the New York Times has dropped dramatically. The drop in shares and other engagement on tweets with Times links is abrupt, and is not reflected in links to similar news organizations including CNN, the Washington Post, and the BBC, according to NewsWhip's data on 300,000 influential users of X.
The drop in engagement in Times posts seems isolated to X: NewsWhip data showed that engagement with Times links shared on Facebook remained consistent relative to other outlets.
On the other hand, Twitter (rebranded as "X" in recent weeks) is now diminished to the point that the Times has no particular incentive to beg it for traffic: "The dip in engagement is not a major audience problem for the Times," writes Max Tani.
