SAN FRANCISCO: Twit­ter said on Sunday that it would remove accounts created solely for the purpose of promoting other social platforms and content that contains links or usernames.

The move would impact content from platforms like Meta Plat­forms Facebook and Instagram, along with Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post while allowing cross-content posting, Twitter said in a tweet.

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who recently invested in social media platform Nostr, replied to the Twitter support post with one word: “Why?”

In reply to another user posting about the Nostr promotion ban, Dorsey said “doesn’t make sense”.

Short video-platform TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance Ltd, was not included in the list.

Last week, Twitter disbanded its Trust and Safety Council, a volunteer group formed in 2016 to advise the social media platform on site decisions.

The policy change follows other chaotic actions at Twitter since Elon Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla, bought the social network. He fired top management and laid off about half of its workforce, while seesawing on how much to charge for Twitter’s subscription service Twitter Blue.

Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2022