Reminds everyone why they need their own domain name — Elon Musk

Social media services are gatekeepers. That’s why you need to control your online presence.

Elon Musk’s tenure as the head of Twitter has been full of surprises. Today, he dropped a bombshell: you can no longer promote your presence on other social networks.

Or something like that. Twitter’s official rule states (this was originally linked to the rule, but that page has now been removed, throwing even more confusion into that status of the rule announce yesterday):

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:

• Prohibited platforms:
  • Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Post and Nostr
  • 3rd-party social media link aggregators such as linktr.ee, lnk.bio
• Examples:
  • “follow me @username on Instagram”
  • “[email protected]”
  • “check out my profile on Facebook – facebook.com/username”

Yep, it really lists linking to LinkInBio tools like linktr.ee.

Musk later tweeted that casual sharing of links is acceptable. So who knows what the policy is since Musk is making it up on the fly?

He’s just the latest in a line of “free speech absolutists” who really just want to decide what ought to be allowed and what shouldn’t.

One thing is for sure: how you will be able to use Twitter in the future is uncertain.

This is one more example of why you need to control your online presence with your own domain name and website.

Early on, firms encouraged their fans to follow them on Facebook so they could promote their business to them there. Then, Facebook tweaked its algorithm so business posts wouldn’t appear as often, forcing businesses to pay to reach the fanbases they built on the platform.

Now, businesses and personalities ought to be concerned that they might not only have trouble reaching their followers on Twitter, but they might also get cut off entirely for doing something that irks the wealthiest man in the world.

Social media platforms are a must for most businesses but don’t put all your eggs in one basket.