LONDON: Social media platform X, formerly Twitter, has restricted access to The New York Times website, Arab media reported on Monday.
Arab news quoting website Semafor said that an investigation by the social media traffic engagement platform NewsWhip found the rate of posts published by the NYT significantly dropped on X since late July.
Major drop recorded in engagement for NYT
NewsWhip spokesperson Benedict Nicholson told Semafor that a major drop in engagement for NYT has been recorded as compared to the other sites in late July/early August.
NewsWhip’s data was collected from 300,000 influential users of Elon Musk-owned platform X.
The investigation noted that this trend was only related to X, and it could not find any changes with NYT links shared on other platforms, such as Facebook. The NYT is said to be cognizant of the issue and is investigating.
It added that several articles about healthcare costs shared by former US President Barack Obama last week got fewer views as compared to his past articles.
It is still not clear why engagement on X has been reduced for the NYT. Experts believe that the publication is being restricted on the social media platform.
