[meshugga]

Having a personal website with contact information is not URL cloaking or plaintext onfuscation. Those TOS are ludicrous to begin with, but are not by any reasonable understanding written to say that you can not have a personal website with other social media.

[BryantD]

Sure, you can have a personal website with links to other social media. You just can’t advertise that fact on Twitter.

“We will remove any free promotion of prohibited 3rd-party social media platforms.”

I don’t see how “I have an account on Mastodon and here’s how you can find it” doesn’t violate that. The policy doesn’t require the promotion to be direct. If there was any doubt, the policy explicitly includes linktr.ee.

It’s a ludicrous policy for sure!

[romwell]

The policy says:

>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*

Notice that *all* definitions and examples of "promotion" specifically involve having your URL or username in a tweet.

The "non-technical means" of bypassing policy are still about communicating the username in a tweet.

It is a ludicrous policy, but alleging that it prohibits even mentioning existence of other accounts is a ludicrous interpretation of the ludicrous policy.

"You can find my contact info on my website" is a violation under this interpretation.

As is stating "Twitter isn't the only way to reach me"... and having any off-twitter links (God forbid your FB account is reachable via some sequence of clicks from there!).

So much for the "free speech absolutist" though.

[oneeyedpigeon]

Their argument isn't that you can't have that website, but that you can't promote your other socials, on twitter, via it. Ridiculous, of course.

[catach]

> not URL cloaking or plaintext onfuscation.

Those methods are presented as non-exhaustive examples. "Technical or non-technical means" resolves to every possible method.

[romwell]

Yeah, including telling your friends in a personal conversation.

Or simply having an account on Mastodon, and other people Googling it.

It's absurd.

[DistractionRect]

It's not like he said he'll just write on his site from now on, and got banned because his site also has links to his other social media.

He expressly said you can find his mastodon, a prohibited social media site as outlined by Twitter, on his website.

So he was promoting his mastodon with non-technical means and circumvented the new policy. While linking to the new policy... showing moderators he was well aware of it.