The next explosion on Twitter: Links, as well as most references to competing platforms, are prohibited. Failure to do so will result in a ban.
Elon Musk’s controversial course on Twitter continues. Now, the company no longer wants to allow “free advertising for certain social media platforms on Twitter.” The company writes this in a blog post Sunday night.
In practice, this means that Twitter penalizes links to profiles on competing platforms, a unique procedure to date.
Twitter apparently understands any form of link to the social networking sites Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon and the lesser known in Germany Tribel, Post and Nostr as “free advertising”. In addition, links to so-called link collections such as Linktree are prohibited.
Truth Social can no longer take place on Twitter, the platform that former President Donald Trump expressly established as an alternative to Twitter and on which his followers in particular frolic. Trump himself has also been posting on Truth Social for some time, not Twitter.
Prohibited follow recommendations
In the post, the company also outlines with examples what is no longer allowed besides direct links: follow recommendations like “Follow me @username on Instagram,” profile names on relatively young Twitter competitor Mastodon like “username @ mastodon.social” or “Check out my Facebook profile at facebook.com/username.”
Any attempt to circumvent these requirements, for example by writing the dot in the link, is also considered a violation of the new rules. On the other hand, links from competing platforms to Twitter are still allowed, but not the other way around.
From the delete message to the blocking
Anyone who violates the new rules for the first time, whether in their username, account description, or individual tweets, is initially threatened with “one of a host of actions,” from a removal request to a temporary ban from account. “Multiple rule violations can lead to a permanent access ban.” The innovation also stunned Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey: he responded to a tweet from the official Twitter support account: “Why?”
In recent days, the new owner of Twitter, Elon Musk, had already sparked arguments when Twitter blocked journalists from well-known US outlets who had reported critically on Musk. Musk had falsely accused journalists of sharing his live location on Twitter, putting him and his family at risk. Read more about it here.
In the course of his takeover of Twitter, Musk described himself as a “free speech absolutist,” a radical defender of free speech.
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