{"id":269111,"date":"2025-11-08T03:13:18","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T03:13:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/269111\/"},"modified":"2025-11-08T03:13:18","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T03:13:18","slug":"x-appears-to-be-sending-fake-traffic-across-the-web","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/269111\/","title":{"rendered":"X appears to be sending fake traffic across the web"},"content":{"rendered":"

X\u2019s new link experiment on iOS may be artificially inflating traffic. Websites like Substack and Bluesky noticed a sharp increase in \u201cfake\u201d views<\/a> following the update, something that Nick Eubanks, the VP of owned media at the digital marketing platform Semrush, attributes to a new behavior that preloads content before users click on it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s happening here is a classic case of metrics distortion caused by product experimentation at the platform layer,\u201d Eubanks tells The Verge. With the new experiment<\/a>, X will collapse a post when you click on its link, allowing you to interact with the like, repost, reply, and bookmark buttons while viewing the webpage. Previously, when X\u2019s in-app browser opened a link in a post, the loaded page blocked the X post entirely, impacting engagement with the original X content.<\/p>\n

\u201cX\u2019s new browser is pre-loading link content in the background, meaning the system fetches the destination page before a human actually taps or views it,\u201d Eubanks says. He adds that this \u201cinflates analytics in a few key ways,\u201d including by increasing the appearance of click rates and tricking advertisers, publishers, and creators into thinking they\u2019re seeing more traffic, when it might not \u201ccorrelate to real human visits.\u201d<\/p>\n

These issues came up for Substack CEO Chris Best, who was initially impressed by the boost in traffic to his site following X\u2019s update before realizing<\/a> \u201cmost of the apparent lift is fake.\u201d However, Best says Substack still saw<\/a> an increase in traffic \u201ceven after correcting for the fake views.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paul Frazee, a product manager at Bluesky, also says X\u2019s new<\/a> preloading system has \u201cruined\u201d the site\u2019s metrics for measuring logged-out daily active users. \u201cX has started to open links in the background to make them load faster\u2026 but it has caused a bunch of other sites to get extra traffic that appears real,\u201d Frazee adds.<\/p>\n

X product head Nikita Bier says<\/a> the new link setup addresses a common complaint from creators, who often find posts with links getting lower reach on the platform. \u201cThis is because the web browser covers the post and people forget to Like or Reply,\u201d Bier writes. \u201cSo X doesn\u2019t get a clear signal whether the content is any good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though preloading can help boost engagement on X, it may ultimately harm creators and publishers outside X by making it more difficult for them to determine where their traffic is coming from. \u201cWe\u2019re entering an era where metrics inflation through interface tricks, preloading, autoplay, and AI summarization will blur the line between user engagement and machine behavior,\u201d Eubanks says. \u201cPlatforms that want credibility with creators and advertisers will need to be transparent about how engagement is counted, and separate previews from people.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"X\u2019s new link experiment on iOS may be artificially inflating traffic. Websites like Substack and Bluesky noticed a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269112,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[49,48,1660,64,61,56285,343],"class_list":{"0":"post-269111","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-report","11":"tag-tech","12":"tag-technology","13":"tag-twitter-x","14":"tag-web"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}