Twitter CEO Elon Musk has decided that he won’t allow free promotion on the platform, which is essentially posting an account’s handle on another social media site. The platform announced the strange new policy on Sunday in a series of tweets.
“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,” the Twitter support account posted. “Specifically, we will remove accounts created solely for the purpose of promoting other social platforms and content containing links or usernames for the following platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post.”
Other social sites like Onlyfans, Patreon, Reddit, Substack, Tiktok and Tumblr were not listed by Twitter and it is assumed that users can still link their accounts to these platforms.
So basically you can’t promote Twitter’s apparent competitors. the exact the boundaries of the policy are still somewhat unclear, but it appears that a user cannot even post the nickname of an account on one of these sites. In other words, you can’t post “follow me on @username on Instagram”.
“We always allow cross-posting of content from any social media platform,” the Twitter support account said. “Posting links or usernames on social media platforms not listed above also does not violate this policy.”
The tweet may have been deleted
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Twitter followed by post details of the policy, stating that links to these sites will be prohibited at the tweet and account level. He also clarified that the use of a link aggregator such as linktr.ee and lnk.bio would also be prohibited.
Twitter also said it would ban posting usernames even if you don’t. Actually link but still direct users to other social media accounts.
“Furthermore, any attempt to circumvent the restrictions on external linking to social media platforms prohibited above by technical or non-technical means (e.g., URL obfuscation, obfuscation of plain text) constitutes a violation of this policy,” Twitter wrote. “This includes, but is not limited to, the spelling of ‘period’ for social media platforms that use ‘.’ in names to avoid creating URLs or sharing screenshots of your username on a prohibited social media platform.”
This really is crazy new politics, especially because Musk claims to be a free speech absolutist. Twitter is apparently so concerned about losing users that it won’t even allow users to acknowledge their existence.
The tweet may have been deleted
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The penalty for violating the policy is quite strong.
“We may take a number of actions ranging from deleting one or more Tweets to temporarily locking account(s),” Twitter wrote. “Any subsequent violation will result in a permanent suspension.” The same goes for posting these accounts in your bio.
Things have been weird on Twitter. Musk, for example, just suspended a group of reporters covering him. Now it prohibits posting that you exist on other social sites.
