Sunday, Twitter unveiled a policy forbidding the free promotion of certain other sites after Twitter owner Elon Musk spent the previous days suspending — and then unsuspending —journalists tasked with covering him.
According to the rules, sharing free links to social media sites like Mastodon, Facebook, Instagram, Truth Social, Tribel, Post, and Nostr, as well as aggregating platforms like linktr.ee and lnk.bio, is strictly forbidden.
It also considers posting a screenshot of handles for accounts on banned platforms to be a violation, as well as spelling “dot” as a period.
If it’s a “single incident or first offense,” the user who posted the infringing content may bef asked to remove the offending material. There is the option of a temporary suspension of an account, with the possibility of a permanent suspension for “subsequent violations.”
According to the policy, however, advertising for services that are explicitly forbidden is acceptable. It’s fine to share content on Twitter that originally appeared somewhere else.
This decision was made just two days after Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey tweeted about the rival site Nostr, in which he had invested 14 bitcoin (roughly $245,000 at the time). Many users have likely been discouraged by the platform’s reception of a prominent neo-Nazi after its return and its dissolution of its Trust and Safety Council since Musk took over the company in October, prompting them to encourage their followers to visit their accounts on other sites.
The fact that Elon Musk’s Twitter is trying to keep its users from learning about its competitors says a lot about the company. Is it possible to ask Elon Musk, a man widely regarded as an expert on many subjects?
