UPDATE: Sunday, Dec 18, 2022 · 11:43:29 PM +00:00 · Hunter
After pushback, Musk now suggests the policy might change again … and is claiming he’ll “step down as head of Twitter” if he doesn’t win a Twitter poll.
We've now reached the mass censorship phase of Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter. On Sunday, Twitter announced that they will now be banning tweets that contain "links or usernames" on the competing social platforms "Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post."
The change in Twitter policy is likely meant to stem a flood of departures from Musk's now-unstable platform, and immediately follows weekend mass bannings of journalists who were critical of Musk.
How did we get here? Musk is having a very public crisis and making it everybody else's problem, that's how.
Elon Musk's mass bannings of journalists who so much as mentioned Musk's banning of a group of Twitter account that auto-updated the airport-to-airport travels of private jets owned by some of the world's richest people (including, most importantly, Elon's jet) was pretty much the signal that Twitter as we know it won't be coming back as a noteworthy news source. Journalists can still post there, mind you—but it will be a curated feed. Musk is allowing the far-right hoax promoters behind "Pizzagate" and other conspiracies that led to real-world violence back on the site, but reporters who have long been a thorn in Musk's side for reporting on Tesla's woes and Musk's past aggressive targeting of enemies are being scrubbed from his site. That includes Musk critics who seemingly didn't link to anything about "Elon's Jet" at all, but criticized him in other ways.
This led to another surge of Twitter users fleeing to Mastodon and other social networks over the weekend. And that swiftly led to a new Musk-Twitter policy: No! You can't do that!
As Musk himself was photographed attending the World Cup final in the company of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner on Sunday, Twitter Support issued the new edict. The company will now be banning tweets that contain "links or usernames" referring to Twitter's most consequential social media competitors.
At the moment, the list of banned competitors consists of "Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post." The Twitter policy page explaining the new Musk rule specifies that on both tweets and user accounts, "we will remove" any content "such as linking out" to any of those platforms. Examples of banned speech on Twitter:
• “follow me @username on Instagram” • “username@mastodon.social” • “check out my profile on Facebook - facebook.com/username” • “instagram dot com/username”
Multiple offenses "will result in permanent suspension."
As Musk flails around like a well-beached salmon, let us take this time to note that all of this is deeply damn funny. Elon Musk announced himself to be a free speech warrior when he bought the place. He brought back vaccine conspiracy theorists, elevated the voices of white supremacist groups, and celebrated the return of election hoaxers whose actions led directly to an attempted coup against the United States government—including the coup's leader, Donald Trump.
And now he's banning references to Trump's competing social platform because he's VERY ANGRY that the people he most wants to "own" are fleeing his site in droves rather than putting up with a site in which Elon's personal conspiracy theories and hate groups have free rein while journalists who point out Elon's long, long history of breaking labor laws get axed.
No doing that, says Elon! I'm supposed to be owning the libs right now! Stop leaving, libs!
I've said it before, but: Congratulations, internet. You went up against the once-richest man in the world and utterly broke him using nothing but memes and light criticism. Musk had a well-curated public persona in which he was a can-do-anything ultra-genius; the moment he stepped out of that curated space and into public decision making he erased all of that hard promotional work and exposed himself as the self-indulgent, self-obsessed, flighty, sometimes-criminal high-on-his-own-farts boor he always was.
Sound familiar? Of course it does, it's been the song of American life for a great many years now. It also needs to be mentioned that Musk’s latest move is yet again to do something that’s explicitly illegal in the European Union, and the culmination of all of these abuses has a nontrivial chance of making Twitter a non-viable company everywhere in the EU. The Federal Trade Commission also has a say in all of this, but so far they’ve been moving rather slowly—possibly because they’re still searching for anyone inside Twitter who’s still employed there and can return their calls.
After pushback, Musk now suggests the policy might change again … and is claiming he’ll “step down as head of Twitter” if he doesn’t win a Twitter poll.
We've now reached the mass censorship phase of Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter. On Sunday, Twitter announced that they will now be banning tweets that contain "links or usernames" on the competing social platforms "Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post."
The change in Twitter policy is likely meant to stem a flood of departures from Musk's now-unstable platform, and immediately follows weekend mass bannings of journalists who were critical of Musk.
How did we get here? Musk is having a very public crisis and making it everybody else's problem, that's how.
Elon Musk's mass bannings of journalists who so much as mentioned Musk's banning of a group of Twitter account that auto-updated the airport-to-airport travels of private jets owned by some of the world's richest people (including, most importantly, Elon's jet) was pretty much the signal that Twitter as we know it won't be coming back as a noteworthy news source. Journalists can still post there, mind you—but it will be a curated feed. Musk is allowing the far-right hoax promoters behind "Pizzagate" and other conspiracies that led to real-world violence back on the site, but reporters who have long been a thorn in Musk's side for reporting on Tesla's woes and Musk's past aggressive targeting of enemies are being scrubbed from his site. That includes Musk critics who seemingly didn't link to anything about "Elon's Jet" at all, but criticized him in other ways.
This led to another surge of Twitter users fleeing to Mastodon and other social networks over the weekend. And that swiftly led to a new Musk-Twitter policy: No! You can't do that!
As Musk himself was photographed attending the World Cup final in the company of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner on Sunday, Twitter Support issued the new edict. The company will now be banning tweets that contain "links or usernames" referring to Twitter's most consequential social media competitors.
At the moment, the list of banned competitors consists of "Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post." The Twitter policy page explaining the new Musk rule specifies that on both tweets and user accounts, "we will remove" any content "such as linking out" to any of those platforms. Examples of banned speech on Twitter:
• “follow me @username on Instagram” • “username@mastodon.social” • “check out my profile on Facebook - facebook.com/username” • “instagram dot com/username”
Multiple offenses "will result in permanent suspension."
As Musk flails around like a well-beached salmon, let us take this time to note that all of this is deeply damn funny. Elon Musk announced himself to be a free speech warrior when he bought the place. He brought back vaccine conspiracy theorists, elevated the voices of white supremacist groups, and celebrated the return of election hoaxers whose actions led directly to an attempted coup against the United States government—including the coup's leader, Donald Trump.
And now he's banning references to Trump's competing social platform because he's VERY ANGRY that the people he most wants to "own" are fleeing his site in droves rather than putting up with a site in which Elon's personal conspiracy theories and hate groups have free rein while journalists who point out Elon's long, long history of breaking labor laws get axed.
No doing that, says Elon! I'm supposed to be owning the libs right now! Stop leaving, libs!
I've said it before, but: Congratulations, internet. You went up against the once-richest man in the world and utterly broke him using nothing but memes and light criticism. Musk had a well-curated public persona in which he was a can-do-anything ultra-genius; the moment he stepped out of that curated space and into public decision making he erased all of that hard promotional work and exposed himself as the self-indulgent, self-obsessed, flighty, sometimes-criminal high-on-his-own-farts boor he always was.
Sound familiar? Of course it does, it's been the song of American life for a great many years now. It also needs to be mentioned that Musk’s latest move is yet again to do something that’s explicitly illegal in the European Union, and the culmination of all of these abuses has a nontrivial chance of making Twitter a non-viable company everywhere in the EU. The Federal Trade Commission also has a say in all of this, but so far they’ve been moving rather slowly—possibly because they’re still searching for anyone inside Twitter who’s still employed there and can return their calls.