Twitter has whipped out the giant ban hammer again, this time targeting the competition. The platform decided that it no longer enjoyed other social media platforms advertising on it. After all, it is an attempt to drive traffic to a competing alternative. So it doesn’t come at much of a surprise that it would think this could be bad for business.
In this move, Twitter has focused on certain alternatives, such as Facebook, Instagram, and of course, Truth Social (a social platform developed by Donald Trump). Not only that, but it said it would remove any accounts that were created for the sole purpose of promoting these other platforms.
Specifically, we will remove accounts created solely for the purpose of promoting other social platforms and content that contains links or usernames for the following platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) December 18, 2022
In many ways, this makes perfect sense. Although I am sure there are others that would disagree. Mainly because most social platforms promote one another. Many of them directly supporting special fields in user profiles to list other social platforms the user makes use of. Kind of like our own post a few days ago welcoming users to subscribe to our Youtube channel.
By doing this, Twitter is clearly hoping to reduce bounce rates and keep people on the website longer. Creating more of an enclosed community so users can’t see the next social island further out in the water. It doesn’t want to be a source to advertise everyone else’s $44 billion (or likely less) investments. Did I say that out loud?
So what does this mean for you? If you share posts back and forth between multiple platforms, that’s fine. You just can’t invite people to come check out one of our your profiles on a different site. Or ask them to follow you, subscribe to you, or add you as a friend. If you do, it will be a violating act that could cause penalization (including as much as getting suspended for repeat violations).
Personally, it does kind of feel like a cold authoritarian action. People have been promoting their other profiles since the beginning of social media. While at the same time, this could greatly cut down on spam. Although we will all have to wait for the results overtime to see if that is true or not.
I think the better approach would have been “only” targeting spam accounts that are only in place for the purposes of promoting other social platforms. Say, if Facebook had a Twitter account that did nothing but talk about how great it thinks Facebook is over the competition. That would make perfect sense to quietly snipe that account out of existence. Picking on the personal blogs, influencers, and other basic users trying to make it in the world, might not be the best idea.
In the end, it Musk’s company and he (and they) can do whatever he/they want with it. So it’s time to start paying attention to the little things you do when posting a Tweet. You don’t want to get a slap on the hand (no matter how innocent you think your act was).
What do you think? Do you think this is an act of overstepping? Do you think this is perfectly fine? Will it improve the overall experience in Twitter through time? Take to the comments below and share your own opinions.
1 Comment
I don’t really agree with their doing this. Mostly because I think most people won’t even know it’s a rule. I’m sure there will be many who get blind sighted by this resulting in a ban. If Twitter takes this away while other networks freely practice it I think they will likely remove Twitter from their network as an option and move on.