Twitter briefly banned links and username mentions of Facebook, Instagram and other competitors

While many people took to Twitter to watch the World Cup finals on Sunday, the company presented new policy banning “free promotion” of competing social media sites. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, MastodonTribel, Post, Nostr and The Social Truth of Donald Trump from accounts whose “primary purpose” is to promote content on those platforms.

Users have been told that they will no longer be able to use their Twitter bios to link to other social media profiles or send tweets inviting their followers to follow elsewhere. In addition, the company has restricted the use of third-party aggregators such as Linktree and Link.bio. Twitter warned that users who attempt to circumvent the new policy using technical means such as URL obfuscation or less sophisticated methods will be subject to policy violations.

However, as the Twitter community agreed to the rule change, its CEO had another change of heart. Tweets announcing the new policy within hours, plus a support page outlining the specifics of its implementation, deleted and replaced by a pole to ask: “should we have a policy that prevents the creation or use of existing accounts for the primary purpose of advertising on other social media platforms?” At the time of writing, the “No” option received 86.9 percent of votes.

Before the removal, the support page noted two exceptions to the new rule. “We recognize that certain social media platforms provide alternative experiences to Twitter and allow users to post content to Twitter from those platforms,” ​​the company said. “Generally, any cross-posting to our platform, even from the prohibited sites listed above, does not violate this policy.” In addition, Twitter said it will continue to allow paid promotion from any of the platforms on its new banned list.

According to Twitter, accounts that violate the new policy will be temporarily suspended if it’s their first offense or an “isolated incident.” The company may also have deleted offensive tweets. “Any further violations will result in permanent suspension,” Twitter added. The company said it would temporarily block accounts that added offensive links to their bios. Multiple violations “may result in permanent suspension,” it added.

Twitter began enforcing this policy shortly after it was announced. At 2:17 p.m. ET, Paul Graham, founder of startup accelerator Y Combinator and one of Musk’s takeover backers, said he was done with Twitter after the rule change and told his more than 1.5 million followers to find him at Mastodon. . Then Twitter Graham’s account has been suspendedonly to bring it back before too long.

The policy comes after another tumultuous week on Twitter. On December 15, several prominent journalists, including NBC’s Ben Collins and CNN’s Donnie O’Sullivan They could not access their Twitter accounts. Most of the accounts were either talking Jack Sweeney or his ElonJet accountwas banned for violating the company’s recently announced policy public sharing. Twitter later was restored The accounts of those reporters were suddenly suspended on Saturday The Washington Post journalist Taylor Lorenz. At the time of his suspension, Lorenz had just three posts to his name, one of which was a tweet asking Musk to comment on an upcoming story. Another of his posts linked to his YouTube channel, but at the time, Twitter didn’t have a policy against linking to competing platforms, and its new rule doesn’t mention Google’s video service anywhere.

Update: 12/19, 4:02 AM ET: Article updated to include cancellation of policy change.