Twitter does not return any results for the Telegram query. And some Mastodon-related tweets are marked with a warning banner.
Searches with a keyword that do not succeed and messages published by Internet users that are now accompanied by a warning insert. These are the funny observations that several Internet users have been making in recent hours on Twitter. Observations that the editorial staff of Numerama was also able to make.
No results with Telegram
First discovery: searches with the keyword Telegram return nothing. Whether on the website or the mobile application (Android or iOS), Twitter displays an error message: ” An error has occurred. Try reloading the page “. A provisional banner also appears, in which it is indicated that this request ” Is not valid “.
No explanation is given by the official twitter support account as of December 12. Elon Musk also did not mention the case of Telegram, although he has been the new boss of the social network since the end of October. The topic doesn’t appear on either. Twitter help pages and in its community rulesaccording to our findings.
Telegram is an instant messenger available in a mobile application available on Android and iOS. It is similar to solutions like Signal or WhatsApp: you can start one-on-one or group discussions, transmit documents and files, do video and so on. It has the optional ability to encrypt messages end-to-end.
The founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, did not react to the observations made by Internet users. On Twitter and on Telegram, the Russian has never commented on Twitter politics or Elon Musk’s actions — in any case, no mention appears on either thread going back to the last few months. And the hypothesis of a failed search is to be ruled out, since other requests pass.
A warning banner
Second observation, which only seems to concern Internet users on Twitter based in the United States: publications evoking Mastodon are seen, for some of them, with a warning banner. An example is visible with the tweet of Joshua Topolsky, journalist and founder of The Verge and a few other renowned publications.
The tweet in question reads: I will definitely be posting here much less often. I can’t tell you how much I enjoy Mastodon and strongly suggest you join the team there – if you have any questions about it, I’ll be happy to try to answer them. Meet me there! “. A link to his Mastodon profile is also present.
Joshua Topolsky then posted another message in which he shares a capture of his tweet to show the presence of this banner which declares the following message: “ we placed a warning on this tweet because it may contain sensitive content “. This alert also appears when the tweet is integrated into an article, to hide the link to the profile.
Again, no explanation is given by Elon Musk or by Twitter on any of his accounts or support pages. Joshua Topolsky suggests deliberate action on Twitter’s part, but does not provide proof. According to him, this could be a sign that the exodus from Twitter to Mastodon would be relatively significant. And would worry Twitter.
Mastodon appears more like a rival to Twitter than Telegram, with a relatively similar operation, except that the platform is entirely decentralized. Mastodon is organized into “instances”, which are servers managed by one or more people. Each instance follows its moderation rules which can be more or less severe.
These banners obviously do not (yet) exist in France, since certain services are currently only reserved for Americans – such as the recent relaunch of the paid subscription accompanied by identity verification. We’ve reached out to Twitter for clarification, but the social network hasn’t responded at the time of this article’s publication.
