Behind Thurrott.com: Clickable Links on Twitter/X

Several readers have asked about the auto-posts to Twitter because the links to each article are no longer clickable. I’ve spent more time on this than I care t admit, but my one interaction with dlvr.it, the service I use to auto-post to social media, indicated that it was set up correctly. And then today I discovered that the problem, predictably, is Twitter/X, not me.

“X is now charging for every post that contains a tappable link and shows those posts to fewer people,” dlvr.it told me in a message repeated on its Help website. “Rather than pass that cost on to you, we’ve changed how links work in your X posts. The link URL is still in your post, but followers copy it rather than tap it.”

Obviously, that is not ideal, though neither is paying for tweets that will be seen by fewer people. So dlvr.it is offering two (sort of) workarounds:

• Link page. I can create a page, hosted by dlvr.it, that lists what I’ve shared on Twitter/X. I just did so–you can see it here–but it’s empty until we post more. It’s not clear if this will be auto-added to my tweets, but if not, I should be able to add it.
• QR codes. Dlvr.it can add a small QR code to the bottom-right images in tweets so that anyone can scan them with their phone and go to the content. I enabled this as well and will keep an eye on future auto-tweets to see how that works.

Obviously, neither of these solves the problem fully and both add extra steps to the process. But Twitter/X is terrible and the alternative is paying them more for clickable links that do less than what I already pay each month for dlvr.it.

Hopefully, everyone is using multiple social media services or at least some Twitter/X alternative. Our posts are also auto-linked on Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon and, yes, the links are clickable on those services.