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The wild bans on Twitter accounts continue: As the service announced in a statement in the evening, free advertising for certain social media platforms would no longer be allowed on Twitter.
Accounts created solely for the purpose of promoting other social platforms will be removed.
In addition, content containing links or usernames for the following platforms should be deleted: Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr.
The cross-posting of content from any social media platform is therefore still allowed.
Posting links or usernames to unlisted social media platforms is also not a violation of this policy, it said.
In concrete terms, this means that Twitter wants to remove both tweets and accounts that contain “free advertising for prohibited third-party social media platforms”, such as URLs from Instagram or Facebook profiles.
In addition to the meta platforms mentioned, there are also links to social media such as linktr.ee and lnk.bio.
As examples, Twitter gave:
»Follow me @username on Instagram«
»username@mastodon.social«
»Check out my profile on Facebook – facebook.com/username«
In addition, any attempt to circumvent restrictions on external links to the aforementioned sites by technical or non-technical means, such as URL cloaking or plain text obfuscation, is a violation of policy.
Spelling the dot is also forbidden, such as »instagram dot com/username«.
"We are aware that certain social media platforms offer alternatives to Twitter and allow users to post content from those platforms to Twitter," it said in a statement.
In general, any kind of cross-posting on Twitter does not violate the new policy.
In addition, paid advertising/promotion for any of the prohibited social media platforms is allowed.
Accounts violating the new policy appear to be immediately put under surveillance: if violations of this policy are an isolated or first-time offense, a range of actions would be taken, ranging from requesting the deletion of one or more tweets to to temporarily block accounts.
Any further violations will result in a permanent ban.
Twitter left open when the new regulation should apply.
During a first test in the evening, a link to Instagram could still be posted.
Account blocked by US journalist
Twitter had already attracted attention on Sunday morning with an account suspension.
The company, led by Elon Musk, had banned the well-known US journalist Taylor Lorenz from the platform.
If you want to call up your page, you will only see the message "Account blocked" instead of your tweets.
Lorenz works as a tech journalist for the Washington Post and had around 340,000 followers on the social media platform.
The reason for the ban is unclear.
Taylor herself told SPIEGEL that she had not received any justification from Twitter.
She suspects that the trigger for the deletion could have been a tweet that Lorenz sent to Elon Musk on Saturday evening (local time).
In it, she pointed out to the Twitter owner several email inquiries that she had sent him in the course of an ongoing investigation together with her Washington Post colleague Drew Harwell.
Elon Musk himself wrote on Sunday that it was a temporary ban that would be lifted shortly.
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