Twitter to Show Link Content and Tweet Simultaneously
We’re testing a new link experience, starting on iOS -- to make it easier for your followers to engage with your post while browsing links.
For creators, a common complaint is that posts with links tend to get lower reach. This is because the web browser covers the post and people forget to Like or Reply. So X doesn’t get a clear signal whether the content is any good.
To help get better signal, posts will now collapse to the bottom of the page so people can react while you’re reading.
As always, remember: the post should stand alone as great content so write a solid caption.
This seems like a better design, anyway. But my understanding is that, separate from naturally lower engagement, Twitter is still artificially deboosting posts with links, leading to an unfortunate pattern where people post the link in a reply to the main tweet. He insists that this is not the case.
Note that this new “feature” makes articles load slower and allows Twitter to see more of your browsing habits because it’s no longer using SFSafariViewController. That means no more fraudulent website warnings and no more content/ad/tracker blockers.
Part of the blame is on Apple for making SFSVC such a rigid and badly constructed API, that supports zero customization.
Previously:
Update (2025-10-30): Max Odnoletkov:
Don’t know about better design, but it is atrocious from performance, usability, privacy and security perspective. Had it on for a couple of days and now it’s back to normal SFVC. Hopefully the experiment is all negative and they’ll drop the idea.
Update (2025-11-05): stillatit:
I run an ecom store that gets a lot of its customers from Twitter. I was also shocked to see my traffic double or triple overnight and thought the algorithm had blessed me and my business. Soon realized what was actually happening. Thought other traffic-monitors might appreciate this explanation.
[…]
Meanwhile Nikita Bier is pretending they never suppressed tweets with links to begin with[…] A bit of a rewriting of history since Elon and his mom both tweeted about how it wasn’t fair to use his platform to promote other links/platforms, even banning people who shared profiles of other social networks (including Paul Graham for a period). They suppressed all links shortly after.
Here is the latest list of domains that X has excluded from using the new in-app link viewer on iOS
2 Comments RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
> ...no more content/ad/tracker blockers.
Would 1Blocker's local VPN ad/tracker blocker not still function?
It should, but VPN trackers are limited in their potential to block advanced ads, since they work at a much lower level than content blockers or direct JavaScript manipulator extensions.
Apple has painted themselves in a corner with the APIs they have designed. As Rosyna mentions on the Twitter thread, the API goals were to create a unified UI that will signal to users “your privacy is safe here”, but the UI lacks even basic customization, so any junior PM gets an instant allergy to it when they hear they can’t apply their just fabulous custom UI over it. So almost the entire industry is pushed toward the general purpose WKWebView, for which Apple, in their infinite wisdom, never publicly enabled sharing of content blockers with Safari (of which there is internal support in WK). So the result is the sad state we’re in. Few independent app makers use SFSafariViewController, while the vast majority of the industry just implements their own browsers with WKWebView. And neither side will budge.
