Twitter stops opening hyperlinks in AMP on iOS and Android

Twitter has quietly rolled again its help for Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) on cell, in line with a support page noticed by SEO consultant Christian Oliveira. The help web page initially detailed how Twitter would mechanically ship customers of its cell apps to the AMP model of a web page from hyperlinks posted on the social community. However, in some unspecified time in the future since October twenty first, Twitter up to date the web page with a discover saying it’s retiring the characteristic by the top of the yr.

According to data from SearchEngineLand, this retirement course of seems to have been accomplished earlier this month. Now, trying to go to a web page from Twitter seems to ship customers on to the common net web page, moderately than an AMP model that could be accessible.

Although Twitter notes that the AMP permits for “fast-loading, beautiful, high-performing mobile web experiences,” the expertise has proved controversial since Google launched it in 2015. Much of the controversy centered round Google’s perceived management of the challenge, with some critics claiming that it amounted to Google’s try to reinforce its control of the open web.

But it additionally has extra fundamental consumer interface issues for a platform like Twitter due to the way in which it will possibly mess with URLs, when it makes pages seem like from Google whatever the web site that created them. It’s an annoying state of affairs that’s led to the creation of browser extensions which mechanically redirect AMP pages to the unique article URL to cut back confusion.

Twitter’s help doc doesn’t give a cause for its change in coverage. A spokesperson was not instantly accessible to answer a request for remark.

The social community’s transfer follows a coverage change from Google itself in May 2020 when it introduced that it could no longer require news sites to supply AMP variations of their pages with a purpose to be featured in its search engine’s Top Stories part. The transfer was a very long time coming following a Google initiative launched in May 2018 to take what the corporate had realized from AMP and switch its options into basic net requirements.

For extra background on AMP, take a look at this 2018 episode of The Vergecast that includes an interview with AMP’s former tech lead Malte Ubl.