Twitter Bans Linking Outside Accounts
The Twitter logo is seen at their headquarters on April 26, 2022 in downtown San Francisco, California.
Tesla and SpaceX owner Elon Musk purchased Twitter in October for $44 billion. He promised a more open platform that would support free speech.The Twitter Support account announced a new rule for the social media site on Sunday: Linking alternative accounts on “certain social media sites” will now be banned.Posts linking to and accounts created to promote alternative accounts on Facebook*, Instagram* Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr, and Post are now banned on the platform.Spelling out “dot” in place of “.” to prevent a link being created is also considered a violation.Twitter Support notes that “cross posting” will still be allowed. However, links to social media aggregators, such as linktr.ee and lnk.bo will be prohibited.The policy page for the new rule lists specific examples that would run afoul of the new rule.
“‘follow me @username on Instagram’
‘username@mastodon.social’
‘check out my profile on Facebook – facebook.com/username’”
Twitter owner Elon Musk has not posted specifically about the rule but did reply to someone in the comments, apparently confirming the new policy.Twitter users have posted videos of offending tweets being blocked from being posted. Sputnik tested linking to outside personal accounts and was able to. It is possible that the new policy or monitoring software is being rolled out in waves, a practice typical in tech companies.Offending tweets will be removed and accounts will be temporarily suspended for violations, per the policy page. Repeat offenders could be suspended permanently.Users will be able to pay to “advertise” their outside accounts, according to the policy page.Twitter users immediately mentioned that the rule could potentially violate US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and European Commission Competition Policy regulations. Neither entity has commented on the new policy at press time.*Facebook and Instagram are owned by Meta which has been banned in Russia for extremist activities