Twitter blocks links to newest rival Meta-led Threads

Links to Twitter's newest Meta-led rival Threads are apparently being removed from the search results page. Recent achievements include Threads surpassing ChatGPT's generative AI-based chatbot to become the app with the quickest downloads of over 100 million.

Andy Baio, a user of the Threads app, initially brought attention to the issue. While all tweets with links to Threads.net websites should have been retrieved, Baio found that a search for the keyword "url:threads.net" produced no hits.

Similarly, other users on Twitter pointed out that they were unable to find the tweets with the Threads link.

Some users, though, have already discovered a means to get past Twitter's new limitations. Users can utilize the microblogging platform's search function to look for posts with Threads links by entering "url:Threads net" in the search box.

Reuters recently reported that threads was launched on 6 July 2023, with the aim of becoming "the public conversation app with 1 billion people on it". Data from web analytics firm Similarweb shows that Twitter's web traffic has dropped by 11 per cent since the launch of Threads compared to the same time last year.