Yesterday, since the day of the 2022 World Cup final, Twitter is now banned from linking to their profiles on other social media sites like Mastodon, Facebook and Instagram. Mentions of nicknames from other platforms are also now prohibited. In reality, Elon Musk tempered by explaining that are targeted, accounts that use Twitter to broadcast mainly other platforms.
Twitter does not like other social networks
This new policy, published by the account TwitterSupport (tweet removed in the meantime) means that Twitter users who want to encourage their followers to follow them on Instagram or Mastodon are no longer allowed to do so. Penalties for violating the rules range from deleting offending tweets to total account suspension.
The policy will be adjusted to suspend accounts only when the *primary* purpose of that account is promoting competitors, which essentially falls under the anti-spam rule
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2022
One of the ways Mastodon has grown since Elon Musk took over the bluebird is through the use of services that helped migrate Twitter followers by scanning bios for Mastodon handles. To avoid this, Twitter will ban this kind of declaration in the biographies.
Interestingly, Twitter is only targeting a handful of platforms with its new policy – not all social media sites. The company specifies that the prohibited platforms are Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Post and Nostr.
It also prohibits links to social media profile aggregators like linktr.ee. These are services that offers a unified page of many social media accounts. Attempting to cheat by changing the privilege (eg replacing the . in the URL with a “dot”) will also be considered a violation.
On the other hand, if you want to share an Instagram or Facebook post, you will be able to do so if it is not the vast majority of your tweets.
It remains to be seen how this new rule will be received, with the boss having promised that the next major changes will be put to a vote.
What do you think of this ban on other social networks?
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