X automatically changed 'Twitter' to 'X' in domain names, breaking legit URLs

Stopthatgirl7@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 735 points –
X automatically changed 'Twitter' to 'X' in users' posts, breaking legit URLs
mashable.com

On Monday, it appears X attempted to encourage users to cease referring to it as Twitter and instead adopt the name X. Some users began noticing that posts viewed via X for iOS were changing any references of "Twitter.com" to "X.com" automatically.

If a user typed in "Twitter.com," they would see "Twitter.com" as they typed it before hitting "Post." But, after submitting, the platform would show "X.com" in its place on the X for iOS app, without the user's permission, for everyone viewing the post.

And shortly after this revelation, it became clear that there was another big issue: X was changing anything ending in "Twitter.com" to "X.com."

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Sell the twitter.com domain name you cowards.

That's inviting phishing. Bad idea.

With a domain as valuable as Twitter.com it's very unlikely it would be sold to a phishing group.

I still don't ever see this happening.

Usually they end up abandoned (can't name your company "Twitter" the next tens of years) and get hacked for phishing.

Just because it's a bad idea doesn't mean Musk won't do it. On the contrary.

Not if someone runs a real site there.

Maybe a mastodon instance. I'll put 20$ towards that.