Over the weekend, we saw Twitter go through a number of dramatic changes, including banning all link sharing to competing social media networks, including Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Tribel, Post, Nostr and Truth Social. It got so extreme that Twitter was even banning people from putting any links to other social media accounts.

Users even discovered that it was also not possible to share links to Mastodon for example in DMs or in any tweets. The use of third-party aggregators like Linktree and Link.bio were also banned. Twitter even stopped users from using URL redirecting and in doing so would result in a pretty swift ban.

However, within a few hours of these changes, Elon Musk had a change of heart and any reference to these changes in the support centre and tweets were deleted. @TwitterSaftey then published a poll asking for the opinion about policy changes, once it had ended 86.7% of voters said ‘no’ to banning existing accounts for the main purpose of advertising other social media platforms.

While the new rule was in place, Twitter suspended Paul Graham (founder of Y Combinator) for sharing a link to his Mastodon account. However, a mere few hours later, his account was then reinstated.