X automatically changed 'Twitter' to 'X' in domain names, breaking legit URLs (mashable.com)

submitted 7 months ago by tree@lemmy.ml to c/technology@hexbear.net

26 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/14106579

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."

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] Rom@hexbear.net 15 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I'm by no means an expert at website things, but wouldn't it be way simpler to take any request to twitter.com and just redirect it to x.com? Pretty sure websites do this all the time, like if you type chapo.chat into the address bar it loads hexbear.net instead.

Actually they literally already do this in the opposite direction. x.com goes to twitter.com. So someone types twitter.com in a tweet, twitter filters it to x.com, then when you click on it it loads twitter.com. Great job Elon, 10/10 no notes.

[-] invalidusernamelol@hexbear.net 12 points 7 months ago

This is a branding move. He wants the name "x.com" to show up more.

The rewritten url still hyperlinks to "twitter.com" and "x.com" still redirects to "twitter.com"

They didn't want to change domain names because that's a nightmare for backend tooling. I'll bet there's over a decade of internal tools that check for "twitter.com" in some response or something.

[-] Rom@hexbear.net 8 points 7 months ago

Damn that sucks, hope he didn't fire all of his experienced engineers who could have gone through the backend and made those changes.

this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2024

97 points (100.0% liked)

technology

23306 readers

333 users here now

On the road to fully automated luxury gay space communism.

Spreading Linux propaganda since 2020

Rules:

1. Obviously abide by the sitewide code of conduct. Bigotry will be met with an immediate ban
2. This community is about technology. Offtopic is permitted as long as it is kept in the comment sections
3. Although this is not /c/libre, FOSS related posting is tolerated, and even welcome in the case of effort posts
4. We believe technology should be liberating. As such, avoid promoting proprietary and/or bourgeois technology
5. Explanatory posts to correct the potential mistakes a comrade made in a post of their own are allowed, as long as they remain respectful
6. No crypto (Bitcoin, NFT, etc.) speculation, unless it is purely informative and not too cringe
7. Absolutely no tech bro shit. If you have a good opinion of Silicon Valley billionaires please manifest yourself so we can ban you.

founded 4 years ago

MODERATORS

Jadzia_Dax@hexbear.net

context@hexbear.net

EmmaGoldman@hexbear.net

SexUnderSocialism@hexbear.net

gaycomputeruser@hexbear.net

ZoomeristLeninist@hexbear.net