Page 12 - aruba-today-20221219
P. 12
A12 HEALTH
Monday 19 deceMber 2022
Twitter bans linking to Facebook,
Instagram, other rivals
By MATT O'BRIEN and BRIAN
P. D. HANNON
Associated Press
Twitter users will no longer
be able to link to certain
rival social media websites,
including what the com-
pany described Sunday
as "prohibited platforms"
Facebook, Instagram and
Mastodon.
It's the latest move by Twit-
ter's new owner Elon Musk
to crack down on certain
speech after he shut down
a Twitter account last week A Twitter logo hangs outside the company's San Francisco of-
that was tracking the flights fices on Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2022.
of his private jet. Associated Press
"We know that many of our
users may be active on oth- Twitter users who are un- nalists who were writing
er social media platforms; happy with Musk's overhaul about the jet-tracking ac-
however, going forward, of Twitter since he bought count, which can still be
Twitter will no longer allow the company for $44 billion found on other sites includ-
free promotion of specific in late October and began ing Mastodon, Facebook,
social media platforms on restoring accounts that ran Instagram and Truth Social,
Twitter," the company said afoul of the previous Twitter alleging that they were
in a statement. leadership's rules against broadcasting "basically as-
The banned platforms in- hateful conduct and other sassination coordinates."
clude mainstream websites harms. He used that to justify Twit-
such as Facebook and In- Some Twitter users have ter's moves last week to
stagram, and upstart rivals included links to their new suspend the accounts of
Mastodon, Tribel, Nostr, Mastodon profile and en- numerous journalists who
Post and former President couraged followers to find cover the social media
Donald Trump's Truth So- them there. That's now platform and Musk, among
cial. Twitter gave no expla- banned on Twitter, as are them reporters working for
nation for why the blacklist attempts to bypass restric- The New York Times, Wash-
included those seven web- tions such as by spelling out ington Post, CNN, Voice of
sites but not others such as "instagram dot com" and a America and other pub-
Parler, TikTok or LinkedIn. username instead of a di- lications. Many of those
Twitter said it will at least rect website link. accounts were restored
temporarily suspend ac- Instagram and Facebook following an online poll by
counts that include the parent company Meta Musk. Then, over the week-
banned websites in their didn't return requests for end, The Washington Post's
profile. However, the prac- comment Sunday. Twitter Taylor Lorenz became the
tice is so widespread that said it will still allow "paid latest journalist to be tem-
it's not clear if — or how — advertisement/promotion" porarily banned from Twit-
the company will enforce from the otherwise banned ter. Lorenz said she and an-
the restrictions on Twitter's platforms, as well as "cross- other Post technology re-
millions of users around the posting" some content orig- porter were researching an
world. Twitter previously inating from the banned article concerning Musk.
took action to block links sites. Musk permanently She had tried to commu-
to one of its rivals, Mast- banned the @ElonJet ac- nicate with the billionaire
odon, after its main Twitter count on Wednesday, then but the attempts went un-
account tweeted about changed Twitter's rules to answered, so she tried to
the @ElonJet controversy prohibit the sharing of an- contact him Saturday by
last week. Mastodon has other person's current loca- posting a message on Twit-
grown rapidly in recent tion without their consent. ter tagging Musk and re-
weeks as an alternative for He then took aim at jour- questing an interview.
The specific topic was not
disclosed in the tweet, al-
though it was in response
to Musk tweeting about
an alleged incident ear-
lier in the week involving
a "violent stalker" in South-
ern California and Musk's
claims that journalists were
revealing his family's loca-
tion by referencing the jet-
tracker account.q