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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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New Twitter policy just dropped:

Promotion of alternative social platforms policy

...

What is a violation of this policy?

At both the Tweet level and the account level, 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, or providing your handle without a URL:

Prohibited platforms:

Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Post and Nostr

3rd-party social media link aggregators such as linktr.ee, lnk.bio

Examples:

“follow me @username on Instagram”

“username@mastodon.social”

“check out my profile on Facebook - facebook.com/username”

Accounts that are used for the main purpose of promoting content on another social platform may be suspended. Additionally, any attempts to bypass restrictions on external links to the above prohibited social media platforms through technical or non-technical means (e.g. URL cloaking, plaintext obfuscation) is in violation of this policy. This includes, but is not limited to, spelling out “dot” for social media platforms that use “.” in the names to avoid URL creation, or sharing screenshots of your handle on a prohibited social media platform.

It's like the man himself says

The acid test for any two competing socioeconomic systems is which side needs to build a wall to keep people from escaping? That’s the bad one!

ETA:

Seems like some large accounts are calling Twitter's bluff. Dril posted a link to their linktree hours ago and so far both post and account are still up.

ETA2:

Musk now polling whether he should step down as head of Twitter, Yes in the lead with 51.5% and just over a million votes cast at the time of this writing.

ETA3:

The link at the top of this post is now a 404, apparently a result of the policy being rescinded, but the internet never forgets.

Looks like he's doing the New Coke strategy. Engagement is way up, no matter how much the media insist twitter is dying. People who promise to quit come back later. That is the genius of Musk's strategy...messing up twitter only makes it more popular and more media coverage about twitter.

Of course engagement is up - it's the world cup and American football time! The top of my "For You" page from a logged out browser in India is #fifaworldcup, ronaldo, #sachintendulkar, golden boot, france 4-2, money money money and greatest of all time. The non-football related topics are #sachintendulkar (a cricketer) and money money money.

A logged out page in America has 8/10 on top being NFL, the last two being "Happy Hannukah" and "Twitter CEO". The top of the page is literally Patriots vs Raiders scores.

I will take the opportunity to re-up a comment I left recently, explaining how Musk can make twitter profitable again: https://www.themotte.org/post/229/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/42105?context=8#context

tl;dr; sports + celebrities. No one cares about paul graham or taylor lorenz, lots of people care about Brady, Belichick and Dicker the Kicker. If you don't know who they are, that's your bubble. The only non-NFL humans that twitter America seems to care about are Tom Cruise, Elon Musk, Lionel Messi and (way down the list) Christina Aguilera.

No one cares about paul graham or taylor lorenz, lots of people care about Brady, Belichick and Dicker the Kicker

A lot of people cared about the twitter files. sports is a big part , but so is politics and other stuff.

I'm sure it is during the brief periods (presidential elections) when a spectacle is happening.

From what I recall of advertising analytics I've done in the past, it's even less profitable than the engagement numbers might suggest. Kellogs doesn't exactly love having Frosted Flakes associated with "Trump is the most raaaaacist guy ever", "Lock Her Up" or even "thousands dead in Somalia" and "plane crash" - it's just a negative mental association.

Tom Cruise, Aguilera and "Happy Hannukah" don't have this problem.