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The link at the top of this post is now a 404, apparently a result of the policy being rescinded, but the internet never forgets.

I started wondering a few hours ago, because the rule seemed so obviously ridiculous. Is he trying the... is it called the "door in the face" trick? The same way that last year twitter updated their rules to ban all "media of private individuals without the permission of the person(s) depicted." Which they then quickly walked back and started only selectively enforcing on people they didn't like.

Is he doing a reverse Machiavelli's governor deal by focusing hatred on himself and then appointing someone else to head Twitter?

Is he doing a reverse Machiavelli's governor deal by focusing hatred on himself and then appointing someone else to head Twitter?

I'd call it the Lelouch Gambit, but that ended fatally, so...

Jesus I'd forgotten all about that show.