Twitter will not allow free promotion of certain social media platforms
twitter.com
twitter.com
What is a violation of this policy?
At both the Tweet level and the account level, we will remove any free promotion of prohibited 3rd-party social media platforms, such as linking out (i.e. using URLs) to any of the below platforms on Twitter, or providing your handle without a URL:
Prohibited platforms:
- Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Post and Nostr
- 3rd-party social media link aggregators such as linktr.ee, lnk.bio
- Examples:
- “follow me @username on Instagram”
- “username@mastodon.social”
- “check out my profile on Facebook - facebook.com/username”
> https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/160453126849379532...
> We still allow cross-posting content from any social media platform. Posting links or usernames to social media platforms not listed above are also not in violation of this policy.
I find it strange they explicitly mention this, though. As if they might decide only completely original media is allowed on Twitter.
Pretty sure that is precisely where things are headed. A viable alternative can’t come soon enough.
[*] To us, but apparently not to them, so let's see where this train is headed next.
All this is going to do is drive creators to mastodon...which means at least for the popular ones, they'll end up gladly giving mastodon a lot of extra visibility.
Which is why they specifically mentioned that this is allowed, since it was something that was top of the mind of whoever made the decision.
All of these changes are coming directly from Elon, impulsively.
Another core tenet is to remove components and try things until something breaks, and then add those components back once they've been proven to be necessary.
This is fine for a startup, but it's quite disruptive for a mature platform with 450m users.
This is kettle logic.
Don't say anything bad about Musk or link to a negative because you'll be banned from Twitter.
I wonder why only these and not LinkedIn, Sina Weibo or Wechat for example?
> What is not a violation of this policy?
> We recognize that certain social media platforms provide alternative experiences to Twitter, and allow users to post content to Twitter from these platforms. In general, any type of cross-posting to our platform is not in violation of this policy, even from the prohibited sites listed above.
I'm not sure what that means.
Does it mean that I can post a link on Twitter to Facebook, etc., if the link is to content I have posted on Facebook, etc.?
Or does it just mean I'm free to copy/paste the text of my Facebook, etc., post to Twitter?
Or something else?
Also, they say
> Additionally, we allow paid advertisement/promotion for any of the prohibited social media platforms.
So if Facebook wants to pay me to promote Facebook on Twitter that is OK? :-) That's awfully generous of Mr. Musk.
This is what I've taken it to mean, but I could be wrong. It's certainly not clear.
June 25 2022
This came to promenance when the Apple Watch launched and Apple started banning apps that mentioned Pebble.
We wouldn't be able to post something like "follow Jamie Oliver to learn more about cooking https://linktr.ee/jamieoliver" ??
Doesn't that have quite an excessive totalitarian feeling?
It does. Basically we just learned that "radical free speech" is newspeak for "only things Elon likes today"
And we already knew Elon is completely mad, so whatever he does or doesn't ban can change by the minute.
I imagine that will impact a lot of small content creators. From what I've seen, many streamers, artists, and indie developers use sites like linktr.ee and carrd.co for advertising for their work across different platforms
The only way I could possibly steel man this decision is if they had data showing this kind of promotion was an imminent existential threat to Twitter, which would jeopardize the broader mission, but I think this is obviously the wrong solution and just digging his grave deeper.
If Twitter isn't to be the place for media platforms of all sizes to announce their publications in whatever media, then what is it to be? AOL again?
Read between the lines and you'll see that this doesn't mean they're backing down from hiding links to popular mastodon servers behind warnings that the links might be dangerous or inappropriate.
For a while now Twitter has been reacting in various ways to people posting links to their mastodon profiles in their twitter bios or making tweets linking to mastodon profiles and tweets...shadowbans, warnings that links are to sensitive/dangerous content, and so on.
It's clearly a targeted action, as people have noticed only links to popular servers were being affected.
Elon is such a child.
Context for those who don't know of this meme, given that it's something like 1 day old: https://mastodon.social/@mattsheffield/109530309049677792
"[someone] misread the Twitter account @joinmastodon as "John Mastodon," and said that the open source social media software was named after this imaginary person."
What a trainwreck.
I wouldn't want to be one of those people, and I hope you wouldn't either.
(c) Twitter's server stack collapses as changes are rolled out and it can't be fixed In a reasanble amount of time resulting in a mass exadus.
(d) they can't make their debt payments and can't pay their workers which will then all leave. Twitter is already behind of paying rent in some places.
(e) Twitter's board members have to show up to congress because of some scandal that playd out on the platform
In that sense, Twitter/Musk idea of of society borrows its ideas from 1984 instead.
Anyone sticking around is hanging on to what they had in the old system.
That’s dead and gone. its time to move on.
You know, in a free-speechy kinda way?
But I decided that my account has basically zero value and it will be phased out after August 2023 (long story on why).
Everything else, a dumpster fire. Especially after these three years.
All I needed to do was mute political threads when they happened (left or right), and I got a lot of interesting stuff out of it.
Now it’s a lot of tribal bullshit.
I wish I could mute Elon Musk and what he does across the entire Internet.
And that’s speaking as someone right of centre. I’m just tired of his antics.
And about muting, I put myself on a smallish Mastodon instance but I've had to mute, filter and block loads of people these days to prevent any inch of politics from appearing in the feed. I hope like this I can have a "curated" experience that is more enjoyable (I used to have an account somewhere else, then the instance turned into political activism and I just deleted it).
You can ignore things but that doesn't make them go away. See 1933.
The press, the journalists, and the "civil society" that prided itself to be the only barrier against the "dangers to society" happily complied. And those who weren't conspiracy theorists were considered at the same level as the true loons (which were always there, but a minority).
All of this with widespread support from the society at large, including the social media platforms like Twitter. I'm not talking about the Twitter Files. I'm talking about a "law of unintended consequences" where independently, most people shared the same mindset and acted accordingly (no conspiracy at all, IOW).
Those journalists that lament the loss of freedom with EM, they may have a point. However, where were they back then? I have a hard time believing them due to this. There are however some exceptions, which I happen to know, that were always consistent in their views, luckily.
from https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/anticompetitive-practices:
> It is unlawful for a company to monopolize or attempt to monopolize trade, meaning a firm with market power cannot act to maintain or acquire a dominant position by excluding competitors or preventing new entry.
Seems pretty freaking clear that this would prevent new entries to the social media space, e.g. mastodon.
Honestly. It's a story old as our collective conception of time. Youth is yearning to power. Being grown up is hoping to $deity that anyone who gets there is too tired or lost to use it to screw things up majorly.
Whether Twitter employees were groomed into censoring in the interest of state authorities or did it on their own volition is probably to be determined. But I think making the fact transparent was a good step. Because that is vastly more relevant than any other content removal if political interests get involved.
This sounds completely reasonable, just as you wouldn’t expect walmart to let you hold rallies to promote Target while you’re shopping in their store.
Yet again, I’m dismayed at the efforts folks will go through to hate Elon and paint him into this bumbling idiot. Hubris is abound.
It's a different business model, the metaphor doesn't work.