ELON MUSK (IMAGE: DPA-ZENTRALBILD/ PATRICK PLEUL)
Twitter has now banned the promotion of some social media competitors on its platform. This includes Instagram, Facebook and Mastodon. But aggregators have also been hit, including Australian startup Linktree, which has hit back over the decision.
“We recognize that many of our users are active on other social media platforms. However, we will no longer allow free promotion of certain social media platforms on Twitter,” Twitter Support said in a now-deleted thread on Monday morning.
“Specifically, we will remove accounts created solely for the purpose of promoting other social platforms and content that contains links or usernames for the following platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post.”
Twitter will however allow paid promotion of other platforms, though this feature doesn’t seem to be live as yet
The tweet thread also revealed that it will allow the cross-posting of content from other platforms. Twitter CEO Elon Musk seemed to back this up in a tweet.
“Casually sharing occasional links is fine, but no more relentless advertising of competitors for free, which is absurd in the extreme,” Musk said.
It’s unclear what could constitute advertising as opposed to ‘casually sharing’.
https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/1604531261791522817
This move could also be in violation of the European Union’s forthcoming Digital Markets Act. This includes obligations for ‘gatekeepers’ such as Twitter from:
- “Treat[ing] services and products offered by the gatekeeper itself more favourably in ranking than similar services or products offered by third parties on the gatekeeper’s platform”; and
- “Prevent[ing] consumers from linking up to businesses outside their platforms.”
It’s worth noting that these new rules don’t come into effect until May 2023. But they do come with fines “of up to 10% of the company’s total worldwide annual turnover, or up to 20% in the event of repeated infringements”.
Linktree co-founder and CEO says the ban is unethical and will hurt creators
Diving into Twitter’s new ‘promotion of alternative social platforms policy‘ revealed more about the changes.
In this document, Twitter also named third-party social media link aggregators as prohibited platforms. Both Linktree and Lnk.Bio were named by Twitter as being banned.
Linktree was founded in Melbourne in 2016 by brothers Alex and Anthony Zaccaria and co-founder Nick Humphreys. The trio were running a music and entertainment digital agency and were tired of having to constantly change Instagram bio links.
Their solution was Linktree, where users can use just one link to send people to a customisable landing page filled with all of their relevant links. This can include social media profiles, websites and monetisation platforms.
In a statement to SmartCompany, Linktree co-founder and CEO Alex Zaccaria said Twitter’s ban is unethical.
“The proposed update to Twitter’s policy, banning creators from linking to other platforms like Linktree, is at its very core anti-creator and antithetical to the open, free Internet on which Twitter was founded,” Zaccaria said.
“Linktree was created to democratise a creator’s presence: providing a free, easy, decentralised space for anyone to create, curate and own their digital universe. This move, banning platforms and limiting interoperability, has real-life consequences for those who rely on Twitter to earn a living: its users.”
Linktree is no longer a mere convenience for users, it’s become a serious platform for content creators and businesses to make money.
Since launching, the platform has grown exponentially. According to a December blog post, Linktree now has 30 million users, as well as a monthly average of 19.7 million monetised link clicks.
According to Linktree, these links weren’t attributed to one category over another. Instead, the business is seeing a vast variety of ‘Linkers’ taking advantage of its monetisation features.
“Social media has more power than ever to inform our purchase decisions. The hashtag #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt has more than 30.5 billion views,” Linktree said in the post.
Zaccaria says this new Twitter policy has the potential to hurt creators and businesses. He also points out that Linktree is a driver for Twitter.
“Forcing creators to be locked in a walled garden, destroys a creator’s chances for growth, monetization and interoperability. Doing this would hurt creators, not other large platforms,” Zaccaria said to SmartCompany.
“In fact, Linktree users drive almost twice as much traffic back to Twitter than Twitter drives to Linktree. This policy would cut that flow and avenue of discovery, again harming the user.
“Creators deserve to own their audience and community across all platforms. It’s their work, their voice and their community — not the platform’s. And the ability to cross-market audiences and platforms is essential to the modern creator.
Didn’t Musk criticise Apple for allegedly doing a similar thing a few weeks ago?
This news comes just three weeks after Musk openly criticised Apple for allegedly stopping most advertising on the platform, as well as threatening to pull Twitter from the App Store.
He also took aim at the company for the 30% ‘Apple Tax’ commission the company takes on every App Store purchase.
Did you know Apple puts a secret 30% tax on everything you buy through their App Store? https://t.co/LGkPZ4EYcz
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 28, 2022
“Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter. Do they hate free speech in America?” Musk tweeted on November 29.
“Apple has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why,” he tweeted on the same day.
Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter. Do they hate free speech in America?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 28, 2022
On December 1, Musk backflipped on the statements after a meeting with Apple CEO, Tim Cook.
“Thanks @tim_cook for taking me around Apple’s beautiful HQ,” Musk said.
“Good conversation. Among other things, we resolved the misunderstanding about Twitter potentially being removed from the App Store. Tim was clear that Apple never considered doing so.”
Since then, Twitter has upped the price of its Blue subscription service to US$11 for iOS users to account for Apple’s cut. It’s currently unclear why Android users won’t be impacted considering Google also tends to take a 30% commission on Play Store purchases as well.
What is clear is that Musk seems to have a short memory and an interesting perspective on free speech considering today’s competitor bans.
But considering that the Elon Era of Twitter has been tumultuous and fraught with banning and unbanning journalists, re-instating far-right accounts and decision backflips – this could all change again. Musk even forward-sizzled a lack of stability back in November.
“Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months. We will keep what works & change what doesn’t,” Musk said.
Even just this morning there was chaos around the platform bans.
“Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes. My apologies. Won’t happen again,” Musk said at the time of writing.
He also said he would step down as head of Twitter based on the results of an ongoing poll.
“I will abide by the results of this poll,” he said.
Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2022
As always with this chapter of Twitter’s story, we really don’t know what’s going to happen until it does.
Update 2:49pm:
The tweets from the Twitter Support account, as well as company’s ‘promotion of alternative social platforms policy‘ page have now been deleted.
It’s unclear what this means and at the time of writing there was no official word from Musk or the Twitter Support account.
That backflip prediction sure did happen a lot faster than anticipated, though.
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