What If Twitter Bans Rival Platforms Like Mastodon? The Good, Bad, and Ugly

Here's a closer look at Twitter's latest policy U-turn that had left many scratching their heads.

Twitter rolled out a policy on Sunday, 18 December, that rattled several of its users. Let's take a closer look at it. 

(Photo: Deeksha Malhotra/The Quint)

Twitter rolled out a policy on Sunday, 18 December, that rattled several of its users. The proposed policy would have disallowed:

• Accounts created solely for the purpose of promoting other social media platforms

• Tweets containing "free promotion" of other social media platforms

• Content that contains links or usernames of other social media handles

However, it would have still allowed:

• Ads promoting social media platforms

• Cross-posted content from any social media platform

Users who violated this policy risked getting temporarily banned from the platform. 

Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr, Post, and Linktree – these eight platforms were named by Twitter as being impacted by the policy. But other prominent social media apps like TikTok, WhatsApp, WeChat, and Weibo were conspicuously left off the blacklist.

High drama ensued as soon as the policy went live with the accounts of several journalists and content creators being suspended.

But 12 hours later, the policy was quietly deleted from its website. Twitter Support's tweets announcing the policy were also taken down.

After rolling back the policy, the platform asked users to vote on it via a Twitter poll. 87 percent of 326,890 votes were a No. But here's a friendly reminder – it's probably better not to take these polls seriously.

For example, Elon Musk also wanted a show of hands on whether he should step down as head of the company. After a majority of 1,75,02,391 users voted Yes, he replied "I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!"

Twitter has been at the centre of a controversy a day since it was taken over by the billionaire. While nearly all changes to the platform have caused a stir, this particular policy U-turn raises several questions: What exactly was Musk’s play with this move? Did it make business sense or was it devoid of any rationale? Maybe, a bit of both?

Let’s take a closer look.

Twitter's Policy Had Some Gains, More Drawbacks

At the outset, Twitter (briefly) banning links of rival social media platforms may seem logical. But the perceived benefits are outweighed by the critical losses to be considered.

Of late, Twitter is being used as a launchpad to other social media platforms. This is especially true since Musk came into the picture. Hence, it would be in the platform's business interest to make it harder for users to jump ship – or at the very least, monetise off of it.

Additionally, Twitter would have only been cracking down on the "free promotion" of rival platforms. This, in turn, could have forced ex-Twitter advertisers like Meta to strongly consider the paid promotion option.

Flip side: While Twitter's policy would have blocked outgoing traffic to other platforms, it would have also obstructed incoming traffic. Not to mention that Twitter also receives "free promotion" on other platforms.

For example, it is common for social media users to screenshot their tweets and post them on Instagram, sometimes even linking out to the original tweet or thread.

But let's say that Instagram decided to stop users from doing this as a tit-for-tat measure. This would not only affect the virality of tweets but also hurt Twitter's image as the public square with hot takes.

New users are also less likely to discover and sign up on Twitter, if this were to happen.

There's more reasons why Twitter stopping users from linking out to competing platforms would have led to unwanted results. Continue diving in.

The Policy Would Have Affected Content Creators

Like whom? Well, the ones who create the most content on Twitter are smaller in number than the vast majority of its users. Over 97 percent of posts on Twitter are from just 25 percent of its users, according to a Pew Research study.

These users are mostly media professionals. The “heartbeat” of Twitter’s user base are reporters, the platform’s former VP of Partners and Marketing Lara Cohen has been quoted as saying in a Bloomberg report.

But Musk’s relationship with this critical set of users has been suspicious at best and rocky at worst.

Recently, Twitter suspended the accounts of several US-based journalists for posting links to accounts like @elonjet that tracks Musk's private plane by using publicly available data.

When confronted by the suspended journalists in a Twitter Spaces conversation, Musk abruptly left the chat.

Although Twitter later agreed to restore the journalists’ accounts, even the temporary banishment of reporters, some of whom have been critical of Musk in the past, didn’t sit well with the media fraternity.

This also led to more users stating that they were done with Twitter. Many of their goodbyes on the platform featured links to their Mastodon handles.

Could this have been the actual reason for Musk proposing the policy in the first place? If so, does that qualify as being good for business?

It Would Have Raised Anti-Competitive Concerns

After the initial announcement, several reports pointed out that the policy would, in all probability, draw further scrutiny from the US Federal Trade Commission for being anti-competitive in nature. But how exactly would it have hurt competition in the tech industry?

Take Apple for instance. It used to prevent any app on the App Store from linking out to external purchase or subscription pages, even if they belonged to the developer themselves. This was because Apple didn’t want to lose out on its 30 percent cut of any transaction carried out via its in-app payment mechanism. But in the face of lawsuits and stringent new laws, Apple began making concessions:

• In 2016, Apple reduced its commission to 15 percent for those apps that don’t generate more than $1million in a year.

• In 2020, reader apps (like Netflix, Spotify, and Kindle) were allowed to provide users with a link to their own payment services.

• That same year, Apple was stopped from implementing its anti-steering rules, thanks to a US court ruling in Epic Games vs Apple.

• Currently, Apple is facing antitrust investigations in Germany, Italy, Russia, Mexico, the UK, India, South Korea, and Mexico, over its App Store policy of prohibiting links to alternatives.

With Musk’s medical device company Neuralink already under federal investigation and Tesla stock in decline, would drawing further scrutiny from regulators by haphazardly implementing such a policy be considered good for business?

It Would Have Intensified Rivalries

Twitter trying to effectively block its users from being redirected to Facebook or Instagram isn’t exactly an original story.

Back in 2010, a Facebook user could find out which of their friends were on Twitter and LinkedIn. However, this didn’t last for long after Facebook reportedly blocked the feature. Two years later, Twitter did the same to Instagram by disabling the latter’s friend-finding feature.

But Twitter’s recently withdrawn policy would have taken things to another extreme because of its overly broad restrictions on users.

For instance, the policy specified that even ​​posting screenshots of other accounts or spelling out words like “dot” as a way to circumvent the restrictions would be considered as a violation. This only prompted some users to tweet in code:

By stopping the "free promotion" of competing platforms, is Twitter also risking the free promotion it receives on other platforms? In other words, can Twitter dish it out as well as take it?

It Would Have Worsened Twitter's Existential Crisis

One of the appealing features of Mastodon is that it has no single person or company taking unilateral decisions on behalf of its users. Instead, it has a distributed group of independent servers sharing open-source code.

This means that anyone can copy the Mastodon code and make their own groups. What’s more, the user who makes the group is the one who takes the moderation calls within that group.

Additionally, users who sign up for one group can interact with users from another group. This is what it means to be a part of Mastodon's 'Fediverse'.

On the other hand, the 'Metaverse', as envisioned by Meta, is expected to have zero barriers to entry, seamless interactions between users, and unprecedented interoperability.

Even Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey's pet project Bluesky is working towards a decentralised social media future.

At a time when the tech industry is bracing itself for disruption, how forward-thinking is it of Twitter to try and make itself more valuable through network effects? For how long will such a business strategy work?