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”
> 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.
What everyone has to understand, is that Elon's companies work by decree. Tesla engineers see a tweet that went out to 100m people about what they're going to deliver in two weeks and go "ohhh shit."
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 confused me too, but I believe they're saying "if you upload (for example) a photo to Instagram, we'll still allow you to upload it to Twitter also, but you're not allowed to link to it".
I find it strange they explicitly mention this, though. As if they might decide only completely original media is allowed on Twitter.
What it indicates to me is that they considered blocking apps that make it easy for someone to post something on multiple social media platforms at the same time.
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.
I think you might be right. If they're refusing to allow you to post something on one network and then link to it on Twitter, that is hilariously petty.
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.
I find the language itself to be pretty clear, but since it would be absolutely insane* if crossposting the same content was prohibited, you think that they simply must have meant something else with that statement. Hence the confusion.
[*] To us, but apparently not to them, so let's see where this train is headed next.
> 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.
Sounds like they acknowledge Musk turned Twitter into a dumpster fire, and they're desperately trying to limit anything that can remotely support the ongoing exodus from Twitter.
Truth Social is a modified Mastodon instance. Given Musk's recent actions against Mastodon, I imagine that the automated tools he's using to find Mastodon instances also detects Truth Social, and he doesn't want to have to deal with exceptions to his rules.
So https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/social-platfo... explicitly lists "username@mastodon.social" or "check out my profile on Facebook - facebook.com/username" as examples (!) of tweets that will be deleted, and posting "instagram dot com/username" will be treated as obfuscation. Oh, and repeat "offenses" result in permanent suspension.
I'm curious if this is legal - at least in the EU it seems like banning discussion of competitors by a media company is something that would already be legislated against.
The new policy prohibits "3rd-party social media link aggregators such as linktr.ee, lnk.bio".
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
Incredibly shortsighted and disappointing, and I say that as someone who respects Elon and had hope for what he’d do with Twitter. Any and all credibility to his “free speech” mission has evaporated.
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.
Because free speech was always about the kind of speech that Musk wanted to be free: transphobia and COVID conspiracy theories. He saw people he agreed with being silenced, but never cared otherwise.
> 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.
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.
"[someone] misread the Twitter account @joinmastodon as "John Mastodon," and said that the open source social media software was named after this imaginary person."
I mean ok, yes it's part of the web and there are legit reasons to link to content there but, you know, make the effort to not do that without a really good reason.
Same. I'm having a difficult time imagining anything happening other than either (a) Musk removes himself or is forced out, or (b) it slowly fades into obscurity like Yahoo. I just don't see how any of this can continue other than maybe hostile foreign states pouring more money into it.
I see a lot of other things that can happen. What ever happens it will be interesting to watch from the side lines. Some other possibilities :
(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
I used to think of Facebook's attempt to control, own and lock our social graph as a manifestation of the Fahrenheigt 451 approach to dystopian society.
In that sense, Twitter/Musk idea of of society borrows its ideas from 1984 instead.
Is linking to your own content "free promotion" of the platform? No. An individual user isn't stealing "free promotion" for the business that owns the competitor platform. They're sharing additional information in a link.
A lot of people called this descent into self-parody well in advance. I understand how reality distortion fields work, so I don't fault people who bought into Elon Musk's myth. I just hope people who did will develop an allergy to others so they aren't duped again. And I especially hope people who mocked and demeaned people who said all this was going to happen will be less reactive and more thoughtful in the future.
Am I the only one who thought that there were no changes in Twitter due to the acquisition and the platform was pretty bad all time around?
A question that seems loaded but I've seen people lamenting the "good old times", but these times were indeed old, but not good, especially if you tried to have a nuanced position in debates.
The site had its problems and employees made mistakes. The "twitter files" revealed something mundane and human behind the scenes: multiple people working on difficult moderation problems and trying to solve them as best they could. There was at least an attempt to do the right thing. That's gone out the window.
I don't agree: there were so-called respectable (because no one saw them as loons, nor sociopaths) people spreading lies and misinformation to fuel panic and subsequent engagement, without any sanction. Not the former POTUS, nor the people quoted in the Twitter Files.
I'm talking about professional fear-mongers like Dr.Eric Feigl-Ding.
Personally I wouldn't want a removal of said posts (nor of the others), but the dissonance, at least with these people, was great.
It's been a pit since around 2014, ramped up to the garbage heap in 2016, then went absolutely off the rails in 2020. All Musk did before now is formalize how bad it was by decree. This is different because it essentially undid what a lot of holdouts were using it for. I don't think most creators were as dependent on it as they believed, but it wasn't entirely learned helplessness. It's going to take work to weave their platforms back together now that they can't link to anything on Twitter.
To be honest, I experienced what it meant to be on the "bad side of the fence", in my little universe (20 following, a few hundred followers of which mostly I don't know who they are) well before Musk. It was pretty stressful if you chose to engage with the platform.
But I decided that my account has basically zero value and it will be phased out after August 2023 (long story on why).
Currently the only one I've found that is even remotely decent is a sub-set of Japanese content creators that sticks only to what they are doing (a little obsessively, perhaps) and little else.
Everything else, a dumpster fire. Especially after these three years.
Personally I don't get either the Musk cheering, or the hatred. I cared little about him.
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).
I didn't ignore this at all. In fact, I raised my (little) voice against the widespread loss of civil liberties (those who live in the USA have no idea, really) that were carried out in the past three years all across the world, following a foolish move by a poor, incompetent PM. And EM had nothing to do with this.
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.
The emperor has no clothes, people are realizing it, he banned clothing-related discussions, and he's now banning any site where clothing-related discussions can happen.
> 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.
Whether it’s Twitter or the US Supreme Court, I’m amused how the group out of power argues earnestly for restraint of power until the millisecond they gain power and immediately adopt their opponent’s previous position for the free exercise of power while their opponents immediately begin arguing earnestly for restraint of power.
Same as it ever was. I'm amused at how many people believed and still believe that it was going to be different this time. Hero worship and unrequited love for Musk is just bizarre.
This is unfair bothsidesism. During the "progressive" era of twitter governance, policy was introduced with countless warnings and slow-walks, and had clear justification. There was nothing as naked as the retroactive bans for location info or as anticompetitive as banning linking to your off-site social media profile.
Not really, it was pretty strong curation of certain narratives and maybe the FBI was also involved. They had pretty strong ties which many already suspected.
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.
What do you mean "the entire point of having power is to avoid exercising it as much as possible to minimize disruption? We worked hard to get here, now you're telling me not to use it?"
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.
Musk doesn't want to see his $40bn investment disappear in a puff of smoke in a couple of months. Sure, he expected his brand with the public to stay strong but then, at about the same time, he started to behave in Trumpish ways, nay say Dr. Fauci (so Musk is an anti-vaxxer?, really?), treat a large proportion of the Twitter employees like dirt. This all adds up to very poor timing. Musk needs to find a top class PR firm or his entire $40bn could slip through his fingers. Look on My Works Ye Mighty and Despair.
I look forward to Dang booting this news off the site in 20 minutes because objective reality is not compatible with being polite and centrist about this absolute wingnut debacle.
I'd actually really like to log back into my Twitter account, but I can't get ahold of their customer service dept :( I lost my 2fa key and I stupidly didn't have a backup one installed.
