[HN Gopher] Twitter will not allow free promotion of certain soc...
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Twitter will not allow free promotion of certain social media
platforms
Author : LordAtlas
Score : 151 points
Date : 2022-12-18 17:42 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| optionalsquid wrote:
| 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
| FranzFerdiNaN wrote:
| Im starting to think this Musk dude isn't as smart as he made
| people believe.
| d23 wrote:
| 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.
| Pxtl wrote:
| 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.
| crmd wrote:
| 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.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| 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.
| salawat wrote:
| 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.
| Pxtl wrote:
| 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.
| d23 wrote:
| I just don't see how anyone with a modicum of intellectual
| honesty and consistency can still support this person on anything
| resembling principles.
| grappler wrote:
| Using twitter, linking to twitter, giving a twitter as your
| contact handle... these things are now markers of the Wrong Kind
| of People.
|
| I wouldn't want to be one of those people, and I hope you
| wouldn't either.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Sarcasm?
| grappler wrote:
| Not even a bit
| sidcool wrote:
| Yep. Put more people on a pedestal and watch them harm society.
| sergiomattei wrote:
| I'm stunned. This seems to be a hot-headed move out of fear of
| these platforms.
| [deleted]
| kccoder wrote:
| Not a sign of confidence in one's own product.
| hairofadog wrote:
| 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.
| sschueller wrote:
| 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
| [deleted]
| cramjabsyn wrote:
| Time for a mass exodus. Seriously.
|
| Anyone sticking around is hanging on to what they had in the old
| system.
|
| That's dead and gone. its time to move on.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _The acid test for any two competing socioeconomic systems is
| which side needs to build a wall to keep people from escaping?
| That's the bad one!_
|
| June 25 2022
|
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1533616384747442176
| rlt wrote:
| 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.
| Pxtl wrote:
| 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.
| d23 wrote:
| Finding out his daughter is trans put his public transphobia
| in a particularly cruel light for me.
| phonix wrote:
| From his point of view, he probably sees it as his son
| being groomed by an online cult, and will do anything in
| his power to vanquish it.
| orange_fritter wrote:
| I thought "the broader mission" of Elon's purchase of Twitter
| at this point was to be radically dedicated to free speech,
| even if he loses money.
| almog wrote:
| 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.
| madars wrote:
| 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.
| esperent wrote:
| 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.
| fredley wrote:
| Apple apply this logic to apps though. You cannot publish an
| app on the App Store that even mentions Android.
|
| This came to promenance when the Apple Watch launched and
| Apple started banning apps that mentioned Pebble.
| laveur wrote:
| This sure sounds like a good way to get an
| antitrust/anticompetitive lawsuit launched against you.
| [deleted]
| Kye wrote:
| 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.
| lbeltrame wrote:
| 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.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| There were good pockets. If you followed the right people and
| set it to chronological display, it was quite useful.
| lbeltrame wrote:
| 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.
| indemnity wrote:
| I follow mostly tech people (makers, not influencers), and
| it's been great.
|
| All I needed to do was mute political threads when they
| happened (left or right), and I got a lot of interesting
| stuff out of it.
|
| Now it's a lot of tribal bullshit.
|
| I wish I could mute Elon Musk and what he does across the
| entire Internet.
|
| And that's speaking as someone right of centre. I'm just
| tired of his antics.
| lbeltrame wrote:
| 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).
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| The reality is that Musk is a billionaire leading a cult
| which has a lot of powerful people in it.
|
| You can ignore things but that doesn't make them go away.
| See 1933.
| lbeltrame wrote:
| 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.
| Kye wrote:
| 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.
| lbeltrame wrote:
| 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).
| d23 wrote:
| 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.
| lbeltrame wrote:
| 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.
| thinking4real wrote:
| So you can't use twitter as a tool to promote your social media
| accounts on other platforms.
|
| This sounds completely reasonable, just as you wouldn't expect
| walmart to let you hold rallies to promote Target while you're
| shopping in their store.
|
| Yet again, I'm dismayed at the efforts folks will go through to
| hate Elon and paint him into this bumbling idiot. Hubris is
| abound.
| benj111 wrote:
| Does Walmart depend on people bringing toilet roll in to share
| with others?
|
| It's a different business model, the metaphor doesn't work.
| dorkwood wrote:
| Is it really the equivalent of holding a rally? I think it's
| closer to being walked out of Walmart for wearing a Target
| shirt.
| j1elo wrote:
| Wait so, according to the rules stated at
| https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/social-platfo...
|
| We wouldn't be able to post something like "follow Jamie Oliver
| to learn more about cooking https://linktr.ee/jamieoliver" ??
|
| Doesn't that have quite an excessive totalitarian feeling?
| t0mas88 wrote:
| > Doesn't that have quite an excessive totalitarian feeling?
|
| It does. Basically we just learned that "radical free speech"
| is newspeak for "only things Elon likes today"
|
| And we already knew Elon is completely mad, so whatever he does
| or doesn't ban can change by the minute.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Even I can't think up a devil's advocate argument for this one.
| This is stupid.
|
| If Twitter isn't to be the place for media platforms of all sizes
| to announce their publications in whatever media, then what is it
| to be? AOL again?
| kart23 wrote:
| If there ever was a example of anti-competitive practices, its
| this.
|
| from https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/anticompetitive-practices:
|
| > 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.
| drumhead wrote:
| Will the platforms he's censoring also block links to twitter?
| Seems only fair.
| rchaud wrote:
| why twitter when you can nitter?
|
| https://nitter.net
| kccoder wrote:
| I'm sure Elon would take that tradeoff.
| electrondood wrote:
| 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.
|
| You know, in a free-speechy kinda way?
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Elon is _such a child_.
| Finnucane wrote:
| He fears John Mastodon.
| cesarb wrote:
| > He fears John Mastodon.
|
| Context for those who don't know of this meme, given that
| it's something like 1 day old:
| https://mastodon.social/@mattsheffield/109530309049677792
|
| "[someone] misread the Twitter account @joinmastodon as "John
| Mastodon," and said that the open source social media
| software was named after this imaginary person."
| wilg wrote:
| This really is such a crazy policy there's not much else to say
| about it.
| wildpeaks wrote:
| I'm surprised Reddit isn't in the list
| mid-kid wrote:
| Isn't this an anti-trust violation?
| salawat wrote:
| From my viewpoint, this is anti-competitive. IANAL, just read
| lawyerly things, and maintain a capacity for independent
| thought.
| exabrial wrote:
| 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.
| davidbarker wrote:
| This is stunning. 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"
|
| (https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/social-platfo...)
| hef19898 wrote:
| Truth Social as well? That could be interesting to watch...
| KZerda wrote:
| 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.
| ArekDymalski wrote:
| > Prohibited platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth
| Social, Tribel, Post and Nostr
|
| I wonder why only these and not LinkedIn, Sina Weibo or Wechat
| for example?
| bmarquez wrote:
| TikTok is also an interesting omission.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Lacking Gab stood out to me as well.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| What I don't understand: they posted a second tweet that
| directly contradicts that rules and policies document.
|
| >
| https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/160453126849379532...
|
| > 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.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| What's better than 1 clear rule? 2 ambiguous ones that you
| can use to keep most people confused and paralyzed.
| davidbarker wrote:
| 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.
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| 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.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| 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.
| cywick wrote:
| 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.
| kccoder wrote:
| > As if they might decide only completely original media is
| allowed on Twitter.
|
| Pretty sure that is precisely where things are headed. A
| viable alternative can't come soon enough.
| electrondood wrote:
| 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.
| tzs wrote:
| That same page continues:
|
| > What is not a violation of this policy?
|
| > 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.
| davidbarker wrote:
| > Or does it just mean I'm free to copy/paste the text of my
| Facebook, etc., post to Twitter?
|
| This is what I've taken it to mean, but I could be wrong.
| It's certainly not clear.
| electrondood wrote:
| So, is it "free promotion," or are the platforms "prohibited"?
|
| This is kettle logic.
| simplotek wrote:
| 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.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| Deliberately. This reminds me of Japan where cults have
| successfully terrorised mainstream media of even mentioning
| them.
|
| Don't say anything bad about Musk or link to a negative
| because you'll be banned from Twitter.
| neatze wrote:
| It is funny/sad to how similar it is to what happened with
| freenode.
| d23 wrote:
| I wish there was as turnkey of an alternative available when it
| happened, but his ongoing immolation might give the
| alternatives time to catch up.
| noaheverett wrote:
| Been working on one since last year https://glue.im/noah
| [deleted]
| throwaway128128 wrote:
| Another asterisk on Free** Speech Absolutism.
| michelb wrote:
| There is always a tweet:
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1533616384747442176
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Twitter needs to add OnlyFans and other porn sites to their list.
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| ah the tumblr move. let's see how that works out for him
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