Twitter bans free promotion of alternative social media platforms

Twitter has now banned the “free promotion” of alternative social media sites on its platform.

In a new post on Twitter’s Help Center, the site stated that they will remove any free promotion of prohibited 3rd-party social media platforms on both the Tweet and account levels.

This includes linking out using URLs to any of the prohibited platforms or providing your username or handle on these alternative sites even without a URL.

The prohibited platforms are:

• Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Post, and Nostr
• 3rd-party social media link aggregators such as linktr.ee and lnk.bio

Twitter also cited examples of what it considered free promotion:

• “follow me @username on Instagram”
• “username@mastodon.social”
• “check out my profile on Facebook – facebook.com/username”

According to Twitter, the violation of the policy may result in both the deletion of Tweet/s or temporary suspension from the site altogether.

Twitter also said that any bypassing of the above rules, such as spelling out “dot” to avoid URL creation or sharing screenshots of your handle on the alternative sites is also in violation of their new policy.

However, Twitter noted that users are still allowed to “cross-post” content to Twitter, even from the prohibited sites it listed above. Paid advertisements and promotions for any of the prohibited social media sites are also allowed.

The new policy is in response to Twitter’s recent blocking of users sharing links to servers on rising social media rival, Mastodon and the newest change to the site following CEO Elon Musk’s taking over the company.