X appears to be sending fake traffic across the web
X's new link experiment on iOS may be artificially inflating traffic. Websites like Substack and Bluesky noticed a sharp increase in "fake" views 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.
"What's happening here is a classic case of metrics distortion caused by product experimentation at the platform layer," Eubanks tells The Verge. With the new experiment, X will collapse a post when you click on its link, allowing you to interact with the like, repost, reply, and bookmark buttons while viewi …