I remember back in the old days when Twitter got a lot of flack for preventing Instagram link previews.
EDIT: I got the order wrong, see replies.
Promotion of alternative social platforms policy
201–210 of 790 posts
Re: Promotion of alternative social platforms policy
#202There is no money is promoting free speech or at least not the kind of money Twitter needs to pay back it's investors and creditors. There have been multiple poor business decisions since the buyout. The "burn it the ground and start over mentality" is effectively placing the company in a startup position. Given the risk of startups it would have likely been cheaper/smarter to start a new company than pursue a levera…
There’s been some speculation he is trying to build an Everything app a-la WeChat in China. Aside from the fact that the everything app concept has never really worked outside China, and certainly won’t fly with the EU — he probably would have been better starting it from zero. I’m pretty sure if he could have got out of the Twitter acquisition he would have.
Re: Promotion of alternative social platforms policy
#203Re: Promotion of alternative social platforms policy
#204They are not banning links to other platforms: " We recognize that certain social media platforms provide alternative experiences to Twitter, and allow users to post content to Twitter from these platforms. In general, any type of cross-posting to our platform is not in violation of this policy, even from the prohibited sites listed above. "
Yes they are and they explicitly say as much: > we will remove any free promotion of prohibited 3rd-party social media platforms, such as linking out (i.e. using URLs) to any of the below platforms on Twitter Your quote is referring to cross-posting from other sites to Twitter, not linking.
Still, the way this is drafted I don't interpret it as banning every single type of links but rather promotion of your profile of your content on another platform. It's not as explicit to me as you suggest.
I guess we shall see soon enough.
Re: Promotion of alternative social platforms policy
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would be hard to ban any mention of or links to YouTube, since it's not "just" a social media platform, but also used for video hosting. Twitter of course hosts videos too, but it's a lot less advanced.
What is an advanced video ?
I don't know if this was a serious question, but Twitter's support for video is less advanced. Really, it's clear that it's never been a priority.
The maximum duration is 140s, max file size is 512MB, max resolution is 1280x1024, they use the browser's basic HTML player, and their compression makes all videos look like crap.
https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-api/v1/media/u...
Re: Promotion of alternative social platforms policy
#206Hrm I’m not sure this is the hypocrisy HN thinks it is. Musk wanted to stop biased moderation. He’s done so. He wanted what twitter has done previously in terms of biased moderation to be public. He’s done so. He wanted journalists to be under the same rules as other content creators. He’s done so. Is he obliged to let people promote competitors on Twitter?
If he wishes to support free speech, as he so often claims, then yes, that carries that obligation. But he clearly does not actually care about free speech.
Re: Promotion of alternative social platforms policy
#207What I'm more surprised about is the Human behind the development of these changes.
I don't think Twitter is full of Musk's fanboys, so people implementing these changes are still working there because they have bills to pay.
How sad we are as a society that people need to put making money to survive in front of principles (assuming people know they are implementing rules against free-speech).
Btw, I don't condemn people doing this, but I hope there would be an alternative, and that we are not just continuing to contribute to this surveillance-capitalism--techno- authoritarianism.
Re: Promotion of alternative social platforms policy
#208Worth mentioning that this policy might have suspended John Carmack for this tweet a couple days ago, announcing his resignation from Meta:
https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1603931899810004994...
This is a very, very, very bad policy and shows with absolute clarity that Twitter is far from a free speech platform. Which deeply saddens me. Imagine how absurd it would be for Reddit or Hacker News to have a policy like this. In fact, a similar policy on this site would get my account suspended for this very comment.
More info in these tweets:
https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/160453126179152281...
Also, the policy is vague about whether merely linking to content on a competetive social network results in a ban, or whether the post has to "promote" another specific social network (whatever that means). They say "cross-posting" is allowed, but they don't provide a definition of "cross-posting". Whether the Carmack post would be allowed would hinge on that definition. Either way, it's a boneheaded policy.
Re: Promotion of alternative social platforms policy
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve definitely linked to my profiles on other sites before and never been banned or even warned.
There’s been reports of mastodon links being handled oddly for a while prior to this announcement. Not insta though. Odd Twitter considers them a competitor though Insta did get big through twitter originally.
If by "a while" you mean the past handful of days, then yes. To suggest that this has been an unspoken policy for years is simply wrong and misleading.
Re: Promotion of alternative social platforms policy
#210Wow. How will the free speech absolutists twist this as being pro free speech? This policy makes Twitter the least free speech social media platform available. I wonder how this will work for official Twitter accounts for those other social media platforms? Will @facebook be banned/blocked? Also what about news services that link to a longer form story on alternative platforms?
> Wow. How will the free speech absolutists twist this as being pro free speech?
Same as anything else. Any sequence of words that mimic a rational argument, with no concern for consistency with any previous stance or statement.