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X automatically changed 'Twitter' to 'X' in domain names, breaking legit URLs

On Monday, it appears X attempted to encourage users to cease referring to it as Twitter and instead adopt the name X. Some users began noticing that posts viewed via X for iOS were changing any references of "Twitter.com" to "X.com" automatically.

If a user typed in "Twitter.com," they would see "Twitter.com" as they typed it before hitting "Post." But, after submitting, the platform would show "X.com" in its place on the X for iOS app, without the user's permission, for everyone viewing the post.

And shortly after this revelation, it became clear that there was another big issue: X was changing anything ending in "Twitter.com" to "X.com."

anon_8675309 ,

For someone who is supposed to be smart, he’s an idiot.

lemmyingly ,

I'm interested in why people have hyped him up to be smart?

I've watched a few podcasts with Elon as the guest and he comes across as average as an average person can be.

The only thing I've seen is that he jumps at opportunities he believes will be profitable, and has leveraged what he has against partners and adversaries for his own personal gain.

trustnoone ,

It came from a long time ago. See the power of people like Elon was being rich enough they could throw money at shit with little risk and also be rich enough to get smart people to do all the good shit.

But he was the face of it all for a long time, people legit saw him as the person who brought in electric cars (yeah i know he wasnt) and thinking space x is the rival to NASA.

Many people idolized him as a genius.

Then he ruined it, and you know why? Because he opend his fucking mouth just like the podcast you're talking about and many people saw him for the idiot he was.

The problem? Elon himself believed the bullshit, he hinself thought he was a genius. And now hes trying to "run" things and its all falling to the ground.
Because he never realized the only reason he had anything good was because of the actual smart people employed there.

SpaceCowboy ,
@SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca avatar

Also Iron Man was a big movie at the time so people thought of him as the "real life Tony Stark." That whole myth that you could have a super genius that could build a fusion reactor from a box of scraps was a thing at the time and here's Elon Musk seemingly doing the same kind of thing.

Of course it's silly, you have to have teams of people solving thousands of problems (big and small) to be able to get new technology.

But yeah it's the most extreme version of the old saw "better to keep your mouth shut and have everyone assume you're a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt." In Musk's case, he could have kept his mouth shut and had everyone assume that he's a genius.

omicron ,

Honestly, I'll give Musk the credit for making electric vehicles cool. Not that he did the design or engineering, mind you, but that being stubborn about making electric vehicles "a thing" actually did move the industry towards electric vehicles proper, by throwing money at it and implementing a plan to make it more economically feasible. We all put a lot of faith in Tesla for being the ONLY company that seemed to be pushing forward with mass market EV adoption, when so many other companies were too scared to do it themselves. Now that there are more companies, and older established companies making EVs, and now that Elon has outed himself as kind of a twat, it's easier to dismiss him. But I will give credit where credit is due. I don't think we would see this boom in electric vehicles without him and Tesla kicking the car industry in the balls

Honytawk ,

It is because that is what he is trying to convince the internet to believe.

I'm almost certain he pays a meme troll farm to spread propaganda on the internet for him.

tacosanonymous ,

He is so defensive all the time and it’s exacerbated by his insistence on being wrong. It makes him look extra stupid. It’s impossible for me to comprehend how he graduated from an Ivy League school.

LockheedTheDragon ,

Does anyone know if he use to have Handlers? I always figured the reason he got hyped was because he had people who did his social medias for him and got him good publicity like being on The Big Bang Theory and he thought it was all him. He then fired them all and people saw the real him.

EmperorHenry ,
@EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

I'm still going to call it Twitter.

X sounds like a porn site of some kind. Fun fact, the government in India thought the same thing and banned it for that reason...for awhile.

Apparently it's not a well known story, so I'll remind everyone that India's government banned many different porn sites within their own country's internet access.

I don't know if it's at the DNS level or the actual IP address or what, but they banned almost every free porn site I've ever heard of, even more obscure ones like Jizzhut and alphaporno, even really really low budget ones that are just an index for a bunch of embedded videos from other sites

MenacingPerson ,

I don't know dude, some of those sites are unbanned.

Besides, you can get around the ban by using cloudflare warp

EmperorHenry ,
@EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

or a VPN like proton or mullvad

MenacingPerson ,

those cost money, cloudflare warp is free and it doesn't really matter just for porn

EmperorHenry ,
@EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Cloudflare is almost as bad as google. You shouldn't use it.

MenacingPerson ,

Does it really matter?

https://developers.cloudflare.com/warp-client/privacy/

Regardless of whether you believe in their privacy policy or not, you'd only be using it to browse porn in this situation. it's not that bad.

elephantium ,
@elephantium@lemmy.world avatar

X sounds like a porn site of some kind

Ha, just like people gave you side-eye for mentioning 'hotmail' back in the 90s. "Hotmail, eh? Why do you need a raunchy e-mail address?"

I do agree that X is a stupid name.

EmperorHenry ,
@EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

I do agree that X is a stupid name.

It's a great name for a porn site

SkyezOpen ,

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/974676d7-12b1-431c-82a1-9616bcdc911b.jpeg

EmperorHenry ,
@EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

see? I told you

I don't even know which porn sites those are

HawlSera ,

Start, using, Mastodon.

Mun_Walker , (edited )

-he said on Lemmy
Edit: *She

capital ,

Mastodon is to Twitter as Lemmy is to Reddit.

ilinamorato ,

I think they meant "you're preaching to the choir."

capital ,

Ooooh

HawlSera ,

She, cmon I have Queen in the name

electro1 ,
@electro1@infosec.pub avatar

X is just a BAAAAAAD brand that it's almost insulting the people who uses it, honestly were I'm from it sounds like an adult website..

Semi-Hemi-Demigod ,
@Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social avatar

One of the rules of branding is to choose a unique name to prevent confusion. Half the time I see the X logo I don't know if they're talking about X11 or the website formerly known as Twitter

ThePowerOfGeek ,

Not to mention that from a visual perspective the icon 'x' is synonymous with closing or exiting a window. It's a horrible choice on so many levels.

shininghero ,

Or the XCOM games.

hddsx ,

It’s funny that if you need to clarify X, you can say x11. If you need to clarify X, though, it’s still twitter

Vorticity ,

Oh, do you mean X the window manager or X the social media website?

The fact that a clarification like that needs to be made shows that Twitter has a branding problem.

Now, tell me which is which:

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/d3025393-eb45-4dff-8c3e-377b3ab46b30.png

JackGreenEarth ,
@JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee avatar

Can you tell me, in fact?

laughterlaughter ,

The first one is X11.

hddsx ,

Top left is X11 which means bottom right is Twitter

ozymandias117 ,

I think it’s a trick question. Bottom right is https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+1D54F

hddsx ,

Well you got me curious…

https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-x-logo-unicode-math-textbooks-2023-7

bitchkat ,

X is a window system not a window manager. The window manager is a client application that talks to the X server.

hddsx ,

Can’t believe I didn’t catch that. Good catch.

moon ,

Actually it's refered to Window System/GNU/ Linux

SpaceCowboy ,
@SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca avatar

The top left has some design aesthetic to it. Normally I'd assume the logo with the better aesthetics wouldn't be an open source project logo, but given Musk probably fired anyone that could make a good logo, I'll assume the more boring one (the lower left one) is the Xitter logo.

takeda ,

Heh, now as you mentioned, the logos do look very similar.

bitchkat ,

I immediately thought of the good old Scheiffler and Gettys book: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51YpMj4WSPL._SL500_.jpg

abhibeckert ,

X is just a BAAAAAAD brand

So - a perfectly accurate name for the company then.

hddsx ,

I mean… stockX exists too

Ephera ,

No worries, it sounds like an adult website pretty universally. There's three popular porn sites I can think of, which prominently have an X in their name.

Cosmicomical ,

Also it's not really a brand, it's just a fucking letter of the alphabet. It shouldn't be possible to trademark letters of the alphabet. Basic decency, people

laughterlaughter ,

How about trademarking Alphabet?

Cosmicomical ,

Exactly. Believe it or not, someone invented that word at some point in history. And it wasn't google.

hddsx ,

What? It’s just alpha and beta put together.

Cosmicomical ,

Ok i see someone of us needs a refresher on the concept of invention

conciselyverbose ,

I don't really have an issue with that. No one else was using it to do business in the tech space, at least.

It's a hell of a lot better than Facebook just stealing Meta from a company that was actively using it.

dumbass ,
@dumbass@lemy.lol avatar

My mate sent me a link to a twitter post that had the x.com link and for a moment I legit thought he sent me a porn link by accident.

9point6 ,

https://youtu.be/QDaKTTZtJZY

Elon is a living joke they already made in Futurama.

Lucidlethargy ,
@Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works avatar

It's like that everywhere. Elon is a fucking idiot.

conciselyverbose ,

It a dumpster fire branding, that they took an extremely long time to actually implement, and they still spit out this absolute trainwreck of a rebranding rollout.

MargotRobbie ,
@MargotRobbie@lemmy.world avatar

They should switch the name to Wayland.com as a compromise.

herrcaptain ,

People on X with Nvidia cards are gonna have a bad time.

moon ,

They already are on that alt-right shit hole. Too bad people are too brain broken to love their outrage propaganda garbage.

Rai ,

I dunno, I have a bunch of NVidia cards and when I’m on X, it’s like five hours of a REAAALLY good time.

sincle354 ,

Some poor mfer's shitty regex just got put on blast at a Twitter emergency software dev meeting.

TexasDrunk ,

Some poor mfer's shitty regex just got put on blast

Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck

at a Twitter emergency software dev meeting.

Oh thank goodness!!!

poplargrove ,

I can't imagine how bad things must be for amateurish mistakes like that to have gotten through to the actual app.

Zink ,

Are any of you fine lemmings currently in business school or studying marketing?

I wonder if this whole branding debacle is already actively studied and discussed in academia.

SpaceCowboy ,
@SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca avatar

I don't know if there's much to study about this... make a product shittier and then rebrand to remove any positive brand association with the product when it was better in the past. Yeah, that's a bad idea.

Zink ,

Yeah true, but nothing drives the point home like a huge embarrassing real world example!

JackbyDev ,

It's insane. It's like bandaid changing their name. Everyone calls adhesive bandages bandaids. Everyone calls micro blogging tweets. (In this niche community of fediverse users maybe not.)

Snapz ,

You know how you always mention that brock turner the rapist is a rapist because brock turner is a rapist who doesn't want people to know that he, brock turner, is a rapist?

Same with elon, owner of the now failing Twitter, who was forced to buy twitter after over committing. Since the purchase elon, owner of the now failing Twitter, then proceeded to continually publicly fail for SOO LONG as he tried to unsuccessfully rebrand Twitter, the now failing site that elon musk owns, to x.

Hypx ,
@Hypx@fedia.io avatar

People need to stop using Twitter. It's like trying to using AOL or whatever now. It's basically a dead product.

Thorny_Insight ,

Porn twitter has been totally unaffected by all of this

Tyfud ,

Well, let's add a couple more X's to the domain name then.

Thorny_Insight ,

I thought Elon was insane for wanting to rebrand twitter but apparently he's not alone.

It's twitter. Always has been.

Tramort ,

So you mean setwitter.com ?

jsomae ,

Let's all start using AOL and MSN messenger

Cosmicomical ,

Msn messenger was perfectly fine, until people left me alone on there to join bloody skype

dezmd ,
@dezmd@lemmy.world avatar

AIM using Pidgin client when not on IRC with mIRC or X-Chat. MSN Messenger was never even on the list.

/gatekeeps 00s IMs ;)

Cosmicomical ,

Sure but that didn't save you from skype either, i guess :'-/

Erdgeist ,

And Skype was great until Microsoft bought it.

takeda ,

I am so puzzled by this. I've been using the Internet for 30 years, and in early 2000 people were much more standing up to principles. The greatest example was when digg changed how it operated with v4, people left it overnight. Now they prefer to be fucked over and don't have any intention of changing it, and excuses are really lame like "alternatives are too hard".

I think Yuval Harari was right and social media figured out how to hack our brains and control us.

puppy ,

It's not only laymen either. I have Software Engineering friends who continue to use Twitter because RSS, Mastodon or any other alternative is "hard". They have no core values or integrity whatsoever.

laughterlaughter , (edited )

Why are they your friends, then?

Edit: I should have added more context. I'm not saying you shouldn't be friends with Twitter users. I was referring to this:

They have no core values or integrity whatsoever.

I wouldn't want to be friends with someone with "no integrity whatsoever."

bitchkat ,

Work "friends" or also known as colleagues. Sometimes you just make do.

laughterlaughter ,

Oh, I don't have work friends. I only have coworkers. I used to have work friends, but they rarely were there for me when I got laid off twice.

bitchkat ,

that's why it's work "friends".

laughterlaughter ,

Oh, hehe. I get it now. "friends."

mark ,
@mark@programming.dev avatar

I really hope this is sarcasm. I couldn't imagine basing my friendships solely on whether or not they use Twitter.

laughterlaughter ,

No, that's not what I meant, though I've updated my original comment to add more context.

OP wrote:

They have no core values or integrity whatsoever.

Well, fuck that. Don't be "friends" with people like that.

olympicyes ,

Reddit already existed and was a better option than Digg v3, sort of like how Digg was more useful than Fark for many. I don’t think there is a good replacement for Twitter yet because the people that create the best content are addicted to it.

melpomenesclevage ,

Literally the point.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Funny, Nicholas Gurewitch, the creator of the comic Perry Bible Fellowship, just got his Facebook account stolen from him and made a comic about this subject, how he's still addicted to social media despite that happening...

https://pbfcomics.com/comics/hacked/

zarkanian ,
@zarkanian@sh.itjust.works avatar

The greatest example was when digg changed how it operated with v4

What did they change exactly?

NostraDavid ,
@NostraDavid@programming.dev avatar

Digg used to look like this: http://web.archive.org/web/20100603035130/http://digg.com/

They updated it to this: https://web.archive.org/web/20101231083935/http://digg.com/news

And basically reduced the amount of user-content, to promote... their own stuff? I don't remember what they replaced it with. Users got pissed; left for Reddit.

Now it looks like a typical corporate website: https://digg.com/

stellargmite ,

News sites also need to stop going on about it. Its like feeding the troll. I’ve never used the thing other than looking at it briefly in its early days, and yet I’m constantly hearing about it. And here I am commenting about this apparently (Western) globally important website which has served no purpose in my life. What a waste of energy all around. Self perpetuating negative feedback loop tech wank. Digital town square my arse. The little I know about it is from bad headlines which I wish I could unsee as its of zero consequence.

9point6 ,

There's a whole host of modern journalists who don't know how the fuck to do their jobs without twitter, I'd put money on that being the reason we still read so much about it

Hackerman_uwu ,

I too have underestimated the glee of right wing trolls at twitters turn around. They are keeping it alive somehow.

dantheclamman ,
@dantheclamman@lemmy.world avatar

I have stopped using it to read news. I still use it to keep touch with my professional community (scientists who haven't moved to Bluesky or Mastodon), but that's it. I wish it would just die. Until then I've scripted it and blocked lots of elements to make it look exactly like old Twitter

ShadowCat ,

but what's the alternative? mastodon is quite different, I've tried many times but always give up

DumbAceDragon ,
@DumbAceDragon@sh.itjust.works avatar

I don't get why he's so stubborn on X dot com being a thing. Especially since when I hear dot com I think of the 90s or early 2000s, and specifically the dot com bubble.

x.social or x.net sound way cooler tbh.

isolatedscotch ,

how about x.org lmao

yuriy ,

finally a use for the .fail TLD

zarkanian ,
@zarkanian@sh.itjust.works avatar

Do you have that same problem with Twitter dot com?

DumbAceDragon ,
@DumbAceDragon@sh.itjust.works avatar

Yes but to a lesser extent. The name Twitter doesn't sound like it's trying to be "cool internet thing" as much as X

JonEFive ,

Well, let's talk about when Twitter was founded...

uis ,
@uis@lemm.ee avatar

I choose x.org

Emerald ,

Man what a banger domain to have. Good on xorg

FJT ,

X-Com sounds pretty cool tbh

NostraDavid ,
@NostraDavid@programming.dev avatar

It's "XCOM" nowadays. Since 2012, really.

Murdoc ,

Maybe he just likes the game Xcom.

CosmicCleric ,
@CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

Especially since when I hear dot com I think of the 90s or early 2000s, and specifically the dot com bubble.

x.social or x.net sound way cooler tbh.

Dot com is the high ground of web links though. The best real estate, basically.

trustnoone ,

From what i understand, it actually is a name he came up with in the early 2000s and have tried pushing it before.

Zier ,
@Zier@fedia.io avatar

The only time it's ok to dead name anyone is, Twitter.
Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter
Suck it elon!

puppy ,

It's fine to deadname any corporation. Corporations are not people.

Hildegarde ,

Biologically it is a twitter and nothing can change that.

melpomenesclevage ,

What's the name on its original articles of incorporation?

preppietechie ,
@preppietechie@midwest.social avatar

I’m waiting for someone to marry a corporation just to show how absurd the idea of corporate personhood is.

skulblaka ,
@skulblaka@startrek.website avatar

I'll believe a corporation is a person when I see Texas fuckin' execute one.

sanimalp ,

BRB, registering webetwitter.com for the lols..

andrewth09 ,

Sell the twitter.com domain name you cowards.

MonkderDritte ,

That's inviting phishing. Bad idea.

Dark_Arc ,
@Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg avatar

With a domain as valuable as Twitter.com it's very unlikely it would be sold to a phishing group.

I still don't ever see this happening.

MonkderDritte ,

Usually they end up abandoned (can't name your company "Twitter" the next tens of years) and get hacked for phishing.

Dark_Arc ,
@Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg avatar

Usually they're not so big they became a verb.

melpomenesclevage ,

Not if someone runs a real site there.

Maybe a mastodon instance. I'll put 20$ towards that.

AeonFelis ,

Just because it's a bad idea doesn't mean Musk won't do it. On the contrary.

mstrk ,

I'm waiting for this day

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/efae20bb-2b7e-494d-92f9-58ea32892070.jpeg

LunaCtld ,
@LunaCtld@lemmy.world avatar

He should just rename it to elon.social instead. That's what I think of it nowadays and especially since the name change.

Deceptichum ,
@Deceptichum@sh.itjust.works avatar

Is it social?

You’d think elon.bot maybe?

LunaCtld ,
@LunaCtld@lemmy.world avatar

True!

CosmicCleric ,
@CosmicCleric@lemmy.world avatar

In 1981 IBM tried renaming the computer motherboard the 'planar board'. Nobody would call it the planar board though.

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