On Sunday, when many people were using Twitter to follow the World Cup finals, the business unveiled a new policy that forbade “free advertising” of rival social media platforms. Twitter has announced that going ahead, it will take down links to accounts whose “primary purpose” is to advertise material on those platforms, including Donald Trump’s Truth Social, Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Tribal, Post, and Nostr. Users are no longer permitted to make tweets asking their followers to follow them on other social media platforms, and they can no longer link to their other social media profiles from their Twitter bio.
The business is also limiting the use of other aggregators like Linktree and Link. bio. Twitter cautions users against attempting to circumvent the new policy using technical tricks like URL cloaking or less sophisticated techniques, since they may be discovered in violation of the rules.
We recognize that many of our users are active on other social media platforms. However, we will no longer allow free promotion of certain social media platforms on Twitter.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) December 18, 2022
The company has carved out two exceptions to its new rule. “We recognize that certain social media platforms provide alternative experiences to Twitter, and allow users to post content to Twitter from these platforms,” the company said. “In general, any type of cross-posting to our platform is not in violation of this policy, even from the prohibited sites listed above.” Additionally, Twitter says it will continue to allow paid promotion for any of the platforms on its new prohibited list.
According to Twitter, accounts that violate its new policy may be temporarily locked if it is their first offense or “an isolated incident.” The company will also delete the offending tweets. “Any subsequent offenses will result in permanent suspension,” Twitter adds. The company will also temporarily lock accounts that add the offending links in their bios. Once again, Twitter warns multiple violations “may result in permanent suspension.”
Wild. @PaulG got suspended (for *sending folks to his website for a link to his mastadon). This is gonna get really, really interesting. PG is SV royalty. pic.twitter.com/kXTy4V2wIz
— AlexisOhanian7️⃣7️⃣6️⃣ (@alexisohanian) December 18, 2022
Twitter quickly began enforcing the policy shortly after it was announced. At 2:17 PM ET, Paul Graham, the founder of startup accelerator Y Combinator and someone who came out in support of Musk’s takeover, said he was done with Twitter following the rule change and told his more than 1.5 million followers to find him on Mastodon. A few hours later, Twitter suspended Graham’s account.
The policy comes following another messy week at Twitter. On December 15th, a handful of notable journalists, including NBC’s Ben Collins and CNN’s Donnie O’Sullivan, found they could not access their Twitter accounts. Most of the accounts had either talked about Jack Sweeney or his ElonJet account, which was banned for breaking the company’s recently announced policy against public location sharing. While Twitter later reinstated the accounts of those reporters, on Saturday it abruptly suspended the account of Washington Post journalist Taylor Lorenz. At the time of her suspension, Lorenz only had three posts to her name, one of which was a tweet to Musk asking him to comment on an upcoming story. Another one of her posts linked to her YouTube channel, but at that point, Twitter’s policy against linking to competing platforms didn’t exist, and nowhere in its new rule does it mention Google’s video service.
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