Twitter CEO Elon Musk has determined it will not permit totally free promotion on the platform, which principally quantities to posting the deal with of an account on a unique social media web site. The platform introduced the unusual new coverage on Sunday in a sequence of tweets.
“We acknowledge that a lot of our customers are lively on different social media platforms. Nonetheless, we are going to now not permit free promotion of sure social media platforms on Twitter,” posted the Twitter help account. “Particularly, we are going to take away accounts created solely for the aim of selling different social platforms and content material that comprises hyperlinks or usernames for the next platforms: Fb, Instagram, Mastodon, Fact Social, Tribel, Nostr and Publish.”
Different social websites like Onlyfans, Patreon, Reddit, Substack, Tiktok, and Tumblr weren’t listed by Twitter and it’s presumed that customers can nonetheless hyperlink their accounts to these platforms.
So principally, you may’t promote Twitter’s obvious opponents. The precise limits of the coverage are nonetheless considerably unclear however evidently a consumer can’t even put up the deal with of an account on a type of websites. In different phrases, you may’t put up “observe me at @username on Instagram.”
“We nonetheless permit cross-posting content material from any social media platform,” the Twitter Assist account posted. “Posting hyperlinks or usernames to social media platforms not listed above are additionally not in violation of this coverage.”
Twitter adopted up by posting the main points of the coverage, saying that linking out to these websites shall be barred at each the tweet and account ranges. It additionally clarified that utilizing a hyperlink aggregator equivalent to linktr.ee and lnk.bio can be banned as nicely.
Twitter additionally mentioned it might ban posting usernames even in case you do not really hyperlink out however nonetheless direct customers to different social media accounts.
“Moreover, any makes an attempt to bypass restrictions on exterior hyperlinks to the above prohibited social media platforms by means of technical or non-technical means (e.g. URL cloaking, plaintext obfuscation) is in violation of this coverage,” Twitter wrote. “This contains, however just isn’t restricted to, spelling out ‘dot’ for social media platforms that use ‘.’ within the names to keep away from URL creation, or sharing screenshots of your deal with on a prohibited social media platform.”
It’s really a wild new coverage, particularly as a result of Musk claims to be a free speech absolutist. Twitter is outwardly so involved about dropping customers that it will not even permit customers to acknowledge their existence.
The punishment for violating the coverage is fairly robust.
“We could take numerous actions starting from requiring deletion of a number of Tweets to quickly locking account(s),” Twitter wrote. “Any subsequent offenses will lead to everlasting suspension.” The identical goes for posting these accounts in your bio.
Issues have been unusual on Twitter. Musk, for example, simply suspended a bunch of journalists who cowl him. Now, he is banning posting that you just exist on different social websites.
