Google has reportedly removed much of Twitter’s links from its search results after the social network’s owner Elon Musk announced reading tweets would be limited.

Search Engine Roundtable found that Google had removed 52% of Twitter links since the crackdown began last week. Twitter now blocks users who are not logged in and sets limits on reading tweets.

According to Barry Schwartz, Google reported 471 million Twitter URLs as of Friday. But by Monday morning, that number had plummeted to 227 million.

“For normal indexing of these Twitter URLs, it seems like these tweets are dropping out of the sky,” Schwartz wrote.

Platformer reported last month that Twitter refused to pay its bill for Google Cloud services.

    • MSids@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      I mean, is it evil? Seems like removing results that can’t be seen without a login might make sense. Google has plenty of faults but I don’t know if this is one of them

      • pewter@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Did Pinterest used to require logins to see their images? I remember I used to get annoyed when search results directed me to that site

      • mcepl@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        If it is just a revenge for Elon not paying fees for the Google hosting, it would be very evil indeed. Of course, from Lemmy point of view, it is just reason to get more popcorn.

    • kennydidwhat@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The details are unclear as to why these links were removed. Opining on Alphabet’s morals at this point is premature.

        • kennydidwhat@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          We don’t need to make up reasons to call corpos such as Alphabet evil. The fact of the matter is that at this time, nobody even knows if Google lifted a finger to forward the delisting of Tweets. For all we know, it could be entirely on Twitter’s end.

          Hence, assigning blame to Google for this without understanding their role in it is premature.

          • Bene7rddso@feddit.de
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            1 year ago

            It could also be the search algorithm reacting to all the users returning to google after seeing only the login page

          • Move to lemm.ee@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Why are you so invested in bootlicking for google? They are precisely one of the mega corporations that fediverse exists to get away from. Peertube and other projects target platforms they own just like lemmy targets reddit and mastodon targets twitter. They are one of many centralised ridiculously oversized evil corps that this entire platform aims to subvert.

        • ieatpillowtags@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          He also said “doing evil things” but I’ve seen no evidence that they have “done” anything. This could be just be the algorithm responding to these tweets no longer being visible without login.