It might be easy to forget sometimes, but technically Twitter doesn’t exist anymore.
Elon Musk changed the company’s name to “X” last summer. Yes, the main domain name for Musks X is still Twitter.com. Yes, there are several official pages on the platform where the company still refers to it as “Twitter”. Yes, most people still call it “Twitter.” But Musk’s social media platform is officially called X.
On Monday, X appeared to be trying to persuade users to stop calling themselves Twitter and instead adopt the name X. Some user started notice that posts viewed about X for iOS were Change any References from “Twitter.com” automatically to “X.com”.
X user @___frye posted “Twitter .com”, but in the X app for iOS it shows as “X .com”.
Photo credit: Mashable screenshot
X’s Twitter Dotcom Problem
Yes, you read that correctly. When a user typed “Twitter.com,” they would see “Twitter.com” as they typed it before clicking “Post.” However, once submitted, the platform displayed “X.com” in its place in the X for iOS app, without the user’s permission, to anyone who saw the post.
And shortly after that revelation, it became clear that there was another big problem: X was changing anything with the ending “Twitter.com” to “X.com”.
At the time of publishing this article, a post on X’s website currently appears as follows:
This is how @Arcticstar0’s post looks like X’s website.
Photo credit: Mashable screenshot
This is what the same post currently looks like on X for iOS:
This is what the same @Arcticstar0 post looks like in the X app for iOS.
Photo credit: Mashable screenshot
Why this is a big deal
Let’s say someone owns the domain name “NetfliTwitter.com”. Why should they own this domain name? Because if And if a user clicks on the linked “Netflix.com” text that appears in this post, they would actually be redirected to “NetfliTwitter.com.” Because while X changes the text the user wrote, the URL it references and links to remains the same as the one the user posted.
This is a dream scenario for someone who wants to steal passwords through phishing campaigns.
An example of X changing “NetfliTwitter .com” to “Netflix .com”.
Image credit: Mashable screenshot
The example I just gave is also not a hypothesis. Some users of The
“This domain was acquired to prevent its use for malicious purposes,” reads the headline on NetfliTwitter.com.
A user tried to post “setwitter.com” and Twitter changed the text to “sex.com.”
Photo credit: @___frye
Another domain name “seTwitter.com” was also registered as it could potentially be exploited as X would then change the URL viewed on the “sex.com” platform. X user @amasato_mochi, who registered this domain name, also set up an alert page to raise awareness of the issue.
“Please be very careful not to access suspicious URLs,” says seTwitter.com. “I will keep this domain for a year to prevent damage.”
The tweet may have been deleted
According to some users, the change made by X also affected older posts. This means that any instance where someone previously tweeted “Twitter.com” was retroactively changed to “X.com.”
X eventually recognized the problem and rolled out a patch to some of the domains affected by this change that same day. For example, “Netflitwitter.com” no longer appears as “Netflix.com.”
However, Mashable can confirm that the X for iOS app is currently still available Change many other references from “Twitter.com” to “X.com”. We discovered that the change occurred in one case when “Twitter.com” was used in a subdomain for a different URL.
It’s unclear if this version of the issue will also be fixed at some point. It certainly seems like a bad idea to change the text in a user’s post without their permission. Regardless, the whole ordeal is certainly a notable stumble for X, especially when Elon Musk’s social media platform itself still forwards “X.com” to “Twitter.com.”