Twitter bans users from linking to other social media platforms like Instagram and Mastodon

Update: Elon Musk says the policy will be adjusted to only forbid accounts that are primarily advertising other platforms, and casual linking will once again be permitted.

On Sunday, during the World Cup, Twitter officially banned its users from linking to their profiles on other social media sites like Mastodon, Facebook, and Instagram. Mentions of other platform handles are also now banned.

The policy means Twitter users flocking to Mastodon are no longer allowed to tell their followers to go there instead, for instance. Penalties for breaking the rules include offending tweets being deleted to entire account suspensions.

One of the ways Mastodon has grown is the use of services that help migrate Twitter followers by scanning bios for Mastodon handles. Assuming Twitter follows through with enforcement of its newly announced policy, these services will now be unable to function as people will not be allowed to include their Mastodon names in their Twitter bios.

Interestingly, Twitter is only targeting a handful of platforms with its new policy — not all social media sites. The company specifies the prohibited platforms are “Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Post and Nostr.”

It is also banning links to social media profile aggregators like linktr.ee. These are services that offer a unified page of many social media accounts. Trying to obfuscate the link (such as replacing the . in the URL with ‘dot’) will also be considered as a violation.

Tweets referencing these platforms are also now banned, even if they don’t contain an actual link. For instance, posting “follow me @bzamayo on Mastodon” on Twitter is no longer allowed.

9to5Mac’s Take

So much for free speech, Elon?

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