Twitter to ban users from promoting rival social platforms

Twitter announced Sunday it would no longer allow users to promote their accounts on a host of social media platforms including Facebook and Instagram — the latest policy change by the company under its controversial new owner Elon Musk.

The move — which also affects Mastodon, Post and Truth Social as well as third-party social media link aggregators such as linktr.ee and ink.bio — comes after users started encouraging their followers to view their posts elsewhere, amid the sea changes at Twitter.

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“Going forward, Twitter will no longer allow free promotion of specific social media platforms,” it said in a statement.

“At both the Tweet level and the account level, we will remove any free promotion of prohibited 3rd-party social media platforms, such as linking out (i.e. using URLs) to any of the below platforms on Twitter, or providing your handle without a URL,” the company explained.

Users would thus be barred, for example, from posting “Follow me @username on Instagram,” Twitter said.

First-time violators will face actions “ranging from requiring deletion of one or more Tweets to temporarily locking account(s),” Twitter said.

“Any subsequent offenses will result in permanent suspension.”

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey questioned the new policy with a one-word tweet: “Why?”

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