Tell HN: t.co is adding a five-second delay to some domains

>>xslowz+(OP)
I can confirm. NYT shows a five-second redirect delay: "wget https://t.co/4fs609qwWt". It redirects to gov.uk immediately: "wget https://t.co/iigzas6QBx"

>>kens+71
I don't see it:

  % curl -gsSIw'foo %{time_total}\n' -- https://t.co/4fs609qwWt https://t.co/iigzas6QBx | grep '^\(HTTP/\)\|\(location: \)\|\(foo \)'
  HTTP/2 301 
  location: https://nyti.ms/453cLzc
  foo 0.119295
  HTTP/2 301 
  location: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-acknowledges-acts-of-genocide- committed-by-daesh-against-yazidis
  foo 0.037376

>>mzs+r52
I think Twitter, err, X, just turned off the delay now that it's getting big media attention. I could reproduce it over and over again a little earlier, but now I can't anymore: >>37138161

[Edit:] I'm still seeing it with threads.net:

  curl -v -A 'Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/16.6 Safari/605.1.15' https://t.co/DzIiCFp7Ti

>>lapcat+yd2
I don't see it with your URL either:

  % curl -gsSIw'foo %{time_total}\n' https://t.co/DzIiCFp7Ti | grep '^\(HTTP/\)\|\(location: \)\|\(foo \)'
  HTTP/2 301 
  location: https://www.threads.net/@chaco_mmm_room
  foo 0.123137

Doesn't matter if I do a HTTP/2 HEAD or GET:

  % curl -gsSw'%{time_total}\n' https://t.co/DzIiCFp7Ti 
  0.121503

HTTP/1.1 also shows no delay:

  % curl -gsSw'%{time_total}\n' --http1.1 https://t.co/DzIiCFp7Ti
  0.120044

I chalk this up to rot at X/twitter that is being fixed now that it was noticed.

>>mzs+nj2
> I don't see it with your URL either

That's because you're not spoofing the User-Agent to be a browser rather than curl.

>>lapcat+3k2
Oh that's it, thanks! In fact it it returns a 200 not 301 then:

  % curl -gsSw'%{time_total}\n' -A 'Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/16.6 Safari/605.1.15' https://t.co/DzIiCFp7Ti
  <head><noscript><META http-equiv="refresh" content="0;URL=https://www.threads.net/@chaco_mmm_room"></noscript><title>https://www.threads.net/@chaco_mmm_room</title></head><script>window.opener = null; location.replace("https:\/\/www.threads.net\/@chaco_mmm_room")</script>4.690000
  % curl -gsSIw'%{time_total}\n' -A 'Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/16.6 Safari/605.1.15' https://t.co/DzIiCFp7Ti
  HTTP/2 200 
  ...
  content-length: 272
  ...
  x-response-time: 4524
  ...
  
  4.660211

The delay is not there for nyti.ms (anymore) but once you use the Safari UA it's handled as 200 response:

  % curl -gsSIw'foo %{time_total}\n' -A 'Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/16.6 Safari/605.1.15' https://t.co/4fs609qwWt https://t.co/iigzas6QBx | grep '^\(HTTP/\)\|\(location: \)\|\(foo \)'
  HTTP/2 200 
  foo 0.126043
  HTTP/2 200 
  foo 0.037255

It really does seem that twitter is adding a 4.5s delay to some sites from web browsers. Could be malicious, could be rot...

zlacker