Hilarious new Twitter policy bans mentioning other social media platforms

In what may be the most hilariously petty and desperate move since comically insecure rich guy Elon Musk took over Twitter, the social media site has now banned linking to other social media platforms and will now suspect accounts that exist solely to promote content on other platforms—specifically Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr, and Post. On top of that, you’re not allowed say what your name is on those other platforms, even without a URL attached, and you’re not allowed to list your other social media usernames in your bio. You could also be banned for writing out “dot” in lieu of using an actual URL.

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A more detailed explanation of the very funny and stupid new policy also specifically prohibits link aggregators like linktr.ee and lnk.bio, which a lot of big social media players use to keep their various platforms organized for their fans, with “linktree” even trending on Twitter alongside a bunch of topics related to the final match of the World Cup in Qatar (an event that Musk himself attended alongside famous failson-in-law Jared Kushner, which means neither of them were too broken up about Qatar’s unaddressed human rights violations for some reason).

Basically, this further detracts from whatever usefulness or relevance that Twitter had before Musk began taking over and throwing his near-constant tantrums, hurting both regular people (you’re no longer allowed to your Instagram) and the sort of power-users who once valued Twitter as a useful tool to communicate with followers. And those power-users are the ones who would’ve been more likely to pay for the stupid phony verification checkmark! Why bother now?

There is a possibility that this is all a scheme that Musk planned to distract from his recent (non-hilarious) petty and desperate move of banning a bunch of journalists who had reported on the many petty and desperate things he does (like his decision to ban a Twitter account that tracked the location of his private jet). Accounts quickly began to be reinstated, but the damage is done and the messaging is obvious: There is no such thing as free speech on Twitter.

The obvious endpoint here should just be to ban posting on Twitter altogether. You can’t say anything mean about Elon Musk if you can’t say anything at all, right?