Twitter bans all links to Instagram, Mastodon and other competitors

Twitter will no longer allow users to promote their presence on specific social platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr, and Post. In a post outlining these changes, Twitter says it will take action against users who violate this policy "at both the Tweet level and the account level."

This means that users can no longer include links to their profiles on other social networks in their Twitter bio, nor can they send tweets directing users to check their Instagram or Facebook accounts. The policy does not only include links from other platforms; It even extends to posting competing platform usernames or identifiers without URLs.

While Twitter's support page implies that users can no longer tweet posts from banned platforms unless posted on both platforms, a tweet from Elon Musk contradicts this policy. "Casually sharing occasional links is fine, but no more relentless advertising of competitors for free," he explains.

Twitter may suspend accounts "used for the primary purpose of promoting content on another social platform" and will no longer allow users to link to third-party link aggregators such as Linktree or Lnk.bio. Despite all of this, Twitter is still accepting paid promotion from these banned platforms (although this feature doesn't seem to be available yet):

We recognize that specific social media platforms provide alternative experiences to Twitter, and allow users to post content to Twitter from these platforms. However, in general, any cross-posting to our platform is not in violation of this policy, even from the prohibited sites listed above. Additionally, we allow paid advertisement/promotion for any of the prohibited social media platforms.

Twitter says it will remove any tweets containing policy violations and may temporarily suspend users with links to banned social platforms in their profiles. It will also take action against users who try to circumvent this policy by hiding URLs from other platforms or by "spelling 'dot' for social media platforms that use '.' in names to prevent URL creation, or by sharing screenshots of your identifier on a prohibited social media platform."

Other platforms, such as Telegram, TikTok, YouTube, Weibo, and OnlyFans, remain safe from the Twitter ban, and the motivation behind the prohibition of links to specific networks and not others is unclear. "Twitter should be easy to use, but no more relentless free advertising from competitors," Elon Musk writes on Twitter. "No traditional publisher allows this, and neither does Twitter."