The IT Nerd

Today was the World Cup Final between France and Argentina. And I have to say it was the best World Cup Final, ever. But it’s also the time that Elon and his band of hangers on and lackeys decided to roll out a new policy. It is now forbidden for Twitter users to link to other social media sites. And the way it is worded is very interesting:

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”

Since I have my Mastodon handle in my profile, I checked to see if it was still there and it was. And my account hasn’t been suspended or deleted yet. Thus I have to assume that this isn’t being enforced yet. As for potential punishments, here’s what Elon and company have in mind:

Tweet deletion and temporary account locks

• If violations of this policy are an isolated incident or first offense, we may take a number of actions ranging from requiring deletion of one or more Tweets to temporarily locking account(s). Any subsequent offenses will result in permanent suspension.

Temporary suspension

• If violations of this policy are included in your bio and/or account name, we will temporarily suspend your account and require changes to your profile to no longer be in violation. Subsequent violations may result in permanent suspension.

This policy is stupid. More on that in a moment. Even Jack Dorsey who founded Twitter questions this policy:

Why?

— jack (@jack) December 18, 2022

Clearly Elon is so threatened by the number of people leaving Twitter for places like Mastodon that he’s come up with this as a means to make it as difficult as possible for people to leave and take their followers with them. Even for Elon, that’s a new low. And I suspect that this will accelerate the departure of users from Twitter. Because this policy is not only just bad, but it illustrates that Twitter is no longer a place that is worth spending your to visit. And that will add to all of Elon’s other problems. That on top of the fact that I have sneaking suspicion that some government someplace is going to take notice of this and start making Elon’s life even more miserable than it is now.

For the record, I have no plans on removing my Mastodon handle from my Twitter profile as it’s my way of saying “come at me Elon”. I recommend that nobody else remove their other social media handles from their profile either. Because I would love to see how far Elon is willing to go with this policy.

This entry was posted on December 18, 2022 at 2:18 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.