Twitter will no longer allow users to promote their presence on several social platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post.
In a post outlining the changes, Twitter says it will take action against users who violate this policy “at both the Tweet and account level.”
This means that users can no longer include links to their profiles on other social networks (or even include their handle without a URL) in their Twitter bio, nor can they link to their posts on the platforms prohibited unless it is a cross post.
Twitter also says it can suspend accounts “used for the primary purpose of promoting content on another social platform.” It will no longer allow users to link to third-party link aggregators such as Linktree or Lnk.bio. Despite this, Twitter allows paid promotion of these banned platforms.
Twitter says it will remove any tweets that contain policy violations and may temporarily suspend users with links to banned social platforms on their profiles. It will also take action against users who attempt to circumvent this policy by hiding URLs on other platforms or by “writing ‘dots'” to social media platforms that use ‘.’ in names to avoid creating the URL or sharing screenshots of your handset on a prohibited social media platform.”
Twitter has already banned links to Mastodon and blocks users from posting on a platform level. Attempting to post a link to some Mastodon servers or the site itself results in an error message.
It’s unclear whether Twitter will eventually disable links from banned platforms in a similar fashion, but as of this writing, it appears that users are still able to post links from these networks. Twitter did not immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment.