While Twitter’s new CEO has been trying to convince us that the platform can’t be replaced by Threads, it seems the company is privately rather less confident. A developer noticed that Twitter is blocking Threads links in searches, with others confirming it …
Twitter isn’t worried, honest
CEO Linda Yaccarino has joined her boss Elon Musk in a series of tweets about how irreplaceable Twitter is, and how everything is just fine.
On Twitter, everyone’s voice matters. Whether you’re here to watch history unfold, discover REAL-TIME information all over the world, share your opinions, or learn about others — on Twitter YOU can be real. YOU built the Twitter community.
And that’s irreplaceable. This is your public square. We’re often imitated — but the Twitter community can never be duplicated.
And:
Don’t want to leave you hanging by a thread… but Twitter, you really outdid yourselves! Last week we had our largest usage day since February. There’s only ONE Twitter. You know it. I know it.
Personally, I always know someone is NOT worried AT ALL when they use caps.
Twitter is blocking Threads links in searches
So far, Twitter hasn’t gone as far as blocking links to Threads: You can tweet a link to a Threads post, and it will show up just fine.
But as developer Andy Baio noticed, that isn’t true if you search for them on Twitter.
Twitter is selectively blocking searches for tweets that link to Threads, even though they allow posting Threads URLs (for now).
While the block doesn’t currently appear to apply to everyone, many others are reporting the same thing, including The Verge.
There is a workaround
Fellow developer Derek Kepner discovered a workaround – simply removing the period.
Quote the domain name and remove the period to bypass the block.
In other words, prefix your search term with:
url:"threads net"
If you want to limit your search to those you follow on Twitter, you can add a filter for that:
url:"threads net" filter:follows
It’s not the first time Twitter has tried to digitally erase a competing platform: earlier this year, the platform started restricting tweets with links to Substack newsletters (the restriction was later removed).
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