Twitter Mastodon is a source of danger
Twitter has banned its users from sharing some links to its social media rival, Mastodon.
Mastodon is divided into groups, called servers, based on several topics including UK, snooker, and security.
Twitter has blocked links to some of the largest servers that users will join, including the most popular "social" channel.
Twitter also prevents users from adding links to their Mastodon accounts in their bio - calling it "malware".
There is absolutely no evidence to support the suggestion that Mastodon contains malware - malware that can harm your device.
Mastodon said it gained hundreds of thousands of users in November, with some Twitter users looking for alternative platforms.
If that wasn't strange enough already, Musk apparently joined a Twitter Spaces event with the banned journalist after they discovered a workaround that would allow banned accounts to join the social voice feature. During the call, Musk tried to explain his rationale for the mini ban before abruptly leaving the meeting.
"As I'm sure everyone who's been leveraged would agree, having real-time information about someone's location is inappropriate and I think not everyone on this call would want that to be done with them," Musk said. There will be no discrimination in the future between journalists and what they call journalists and ordinary people. Everyone will be treated the same."
But not all links to Mastodon are banned, and there are ways around it.
The BBC's Technology Editor Zoe Kleinman successfully tweeted a mention of her Mastodon account - [email protected] - as not a clickable link.
A later attempt to turn the reference into a clickable link to her Mastodon Twitter page could not be posted.
It's not clear how many Mastodon servers have been banned on Twitter, or why.
Users who attempt to post links to banned servers will receive an error message instead, which says: "We cannot complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as potentially malicious."
In addition to blocking certain links to Mastodon, Twitter has taken action against its rival's main account.
The Twitterjoinmastodon account, which advertised the site and its features, was unexpectedly suspended Thursday along with the accounts of several high-profile journalists covering Twitter owner Elon Musk.
This has led to the European Union threatening Mr Musk with sanctions, with Commissioner Vera Jourova warning that the EU's Digital Services Act requires respect for media freedom.
"Elon Musk should be aware of this. There are red lines and penalties soon," she wrote on Twitter.
A Twitter spokeswoman told technology website The Verge that the journalists' ban was related to the live sharing of location data.
This came after Musk vowed to sue the owner of a Twitter account that tracks his private plane. This account has also been suspended.
Although no reason was given for Mastodon's comment, there is a coincidence in the timing — in the previous few hours, @joinmastodon shared a link showing where to find the person tracking Mr. Musk's plane on the competing social media site.
Anyone who's spent even a few moments on Twitter over the past month has probably seen some Mastodon links pouring into their feed. The Twitter-alternative, formerly a relatively small and dedicated service, claims to have attracted nearly half a million users in the first two weeks after Musk took over the Twitter job.
Researchers, activists, journalists, and an assortment of disgruntled Twitter users fled to the platform after Musk turned Twitter into a "free-for-all site," as he said he wanted to avoid. Some Twitter users creatively danced around the link ban on Friday by adding a Mastodon profile link to their account name or bio.
Twitter didn't respond to Gizmodo's request for comment on Mastodon's blocks, though it's worth noting that Twitter's communications team suffered significant cuts as part of the company's estimated 3,700 personal layoffs.
The official Mastodon account appears to have gotten the boot shortly after it posted a Mastodon link related to the now-banned ElonJet account. This account, which tracked the location of Musk's private jet, was suspended from Twitter this week, reinstated, and then suspended again for allegedly violating the Twitter Rules.
While it's unclear what actual rules ElonJet broke on Twitter, Musk took to Twitter to say "posting in real time to someone else's location violates doxxing policy." Twitter also suspended the creator of ElonJet, a 20-year-old college student named Jack Sweeney. Musk previously tried to pay Sweeney $5,000 to voluntarily remove the account.
"It's troubling that a hugely important social media company like Twitter is making erratic and unaccountable decisions that affect what we can all see and share online," he said.
“If we are serious about standing up for our democracy and acknowledging the powerful influence that social media can have in shaping our democratic debate, then we need to be serious about holding that power to account.”
Musk then went on to create one of his now all too familiar polls, apparently leaving it to Twitter's increasingly acerbic user base to decide whether or not to bring back members of the press. At the time of writing, 43% of Twitter respondents should reinstate accounts immediately. 14.4% said the ban.
should continue for another seven days while 38.1% said the ban should last "for a longer period". Musk used a similar "scientific" approach to deciding ifFormer President Donald Trump will be recalculated or not.