Since Elon Musk’s successful acquisition of Twitter, the company has been in some pretty serious trouble. Because of this, many have left the platform and flocked to another microblogging his platform called Mastodon. The platform’s user base has grown exponentially, and bird apps don’t seem to like it. According to the BBC, Twitter blocks people from posting links from his Mastodon.
For those who don’t know what Mastodon is, it’s a microblogging site much like Twitter. Post your content to dedicated servers instead of being tossed into one giant algorithmically curated feed. Also, posts can be up to 500 characters instead of 240. Other than that, it’s a very simple social media site where you can post photos, polls, videos, links, and hot takes.
Twitter blocks posting Mastodon links
Talk about a punchdown! Mastodon may not be a nascent platform yet, but it’s still much newer than Twitter and has a much smaller user base. According to a recent Business Of Apps report, Twitter has approximately 450 million monthly active users. Mastodon, on the other hand, has more than 1 million users. This is why Twitter blocks him from posting Mastodon links.
This is reproducible. When I tried to post a link to my Mastodon account in a tweet, I was instantly blocked. While posting a tweet, the preview appeared for a few seconds and then disappeared. Then after hitting “publish” it was nowhere to be found.
This is not limited to tweets. If you think you can get around this by posting a link on your profile, you are sadly mistaken. When I try to post a Mastodon link on my profile, the site blocks it. Mention that the link is “potentially dangerous”, as if it were a link to some sort of malware.
Additionally, the @JoinMastodon Twitter account has been suspended. I know that moving to another social media site isn’t what Twitter wants, but blocking content from being posted from a much smaller website seems very vulgar. Also, these actions more People quit Twitter for another platform. I’ll have to see how this whole thing works.