Elon Musk’s X botched an attempt to replace “twitter.com” links with “x.com”
Elon Musk’s X botched an attempt to replace “twitter.com” links with “x.com”
Elon Musk’s X botched an attempt to replace “twitter.com” links with “x.com”
Automatic text replacement let users spoof URLs ending in x, like netflix.com.
Elon Musk's clumsy brand shift from Twitter to X caused a potentially big problem this week when the social network started automatically changing "twitter.com" to "x.com" in links. The automatic text replacement reportedly applied to any URL ending in "twitter.com" even if it wasn't actually a twitter.com link.
The change apparently went live on X's app for iOS, but not on the web version. It seems to have been a problem for a day or two before the company fixed the automatic text replacement so that it wouldn't affect non-Twitter.com domains.
Security reporter Brian Krebs called the move "a gift to phishers" in an article yesterday. It was a phishing risk because scammers could register a domain name like "netflitwitter.com," which would appear as "netflix.com" in posts on X, but clicking the link would take a user to netflitwitter.com.
"A search at DomainTools.com shows at least 60 domain names have been registered over the past two days for domains ending in 'twitter.com,' although research so far shows the majority of these domains have been registered 'defensively' by private individuals to prevent the domains from being purchased by scammers," Krebs wrote.
It's amazing that not only did they fuck up the regex, but only changed how the link was displayed and not where it linked to. And somehow their org is fucked up enough that someone not only wrote this incompetent code but it went into production.
FTFY
Any talent Twitter once had jumped ship a long time ago
I'm sure plenty of H1B visa talent is still there, terrified to do anything that Musk doesn't explicitly order them to do, thus resulting in the same sort of fuckups that would result if they weren't there. So I guess at least Twitter is stopping foreign people from having to go back to an impoverished life in Goa or wherever.
That's because apparently nobody is around to know you can't pɐɹsǝ 卄ㄒ爪ㄥ ɥʇıʍ Ṝ̷̟̿e̸̗̙̻̍̊̆͝g̷̺̠̦͍̭̜̬̩̎̃Ë̵̛͍̮̥͇͎͎̤͐͂̉̂͜x̸̧̙̎̇͊̈́͐̏͑̒͘
Wait, they just did a text replacement and didn’t change the anchor links? I tried x dot com and it redirects to twitter, so even if they changed the links, too, it would just send them back to twitter.
(laughs in SEO) You fools!
If they really wanted X to happen they’d do a full site migration using 301, or 308, redirects of twitter to x.
Do they just not have the resources to do this or what the hell is stopping them from doing it the correct way if that’s what they want? Doesn’t Musk own the x domain?
It was evident a year ago that Musk fired or drove away all their skilled, competent engineers.
They can't do it the right way because a) they don't know how b) nobody understands most of their existing services, and c) Musk is guaranteed to step in and fuck everything up.
My understanding is, Musk fired all the developers who actually understood how Twitter works, and now they don't know how to manage that migration without breaking the site.
Just optics, I guess? Probably some urgent drug-induced decree from Elron. They still have tons of references to Twitter in various parts of the site. The transition to the 'x' domain (which yes, Musk has owned since 1999) was rushed, hasty, and poorly done, not to mention incredibly stupid from a business perspective.
armchair developer here, but it wouldn't be that hard, right? Isn't it just a single line at the very root of the domain in .htaccess - or whatever equivalent if there's a different stack
Is it amazing? I think it's virtually expected.
You have it exactly backwards. They only changed where the links went, not how they were displayed. That's why it's such a phishing concern.
Nope, why would someone register carfatwitter.com if that was the case?