Musk’s Twitter Blocks Links to Mastodon’s Competitor

• Twitter seems to be prohibiting links to Mastodon’s competitor.
• Insider tried to publish tweets that contained Mastodon links but was met with an error message.
• The error message identified the tweet as potentially harmful. 

Twitter seems to be blocking tweets linking to Mastodon, another social-media platform. 

Insider attempted publishing ten tweets from three Twitter accounts on Thursday evening. All of them contained links to Mastodon user profiles. Each attempt was met by an error message saying: “Your tweet couldn’t be sent due to this link being identified as potentially harmful by Twitter or our Partners. To learn more, visit our Help Center. 

Other Twitter users noticed that links to Mastodon were not being posted on Thursday evening. a platform often touted as an alternative to Twitter. 

—Christopher Hooks (@cd_hooks) December 16, 2022

Ben Collins, a journalist at NBC, was one of them. He found a way to post his Mastodon link using brackets. 

—Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) December 16, 2022

Twitter also available Thursday suspended the official Mastodon Twitter account. It appeared that the move was part of a raft of account suspensionsThat included accounts from CNN journalists Donie O’SullivanThe Washington Post. Drew HarwellThe New York Times Ryan Mac,Independent journalists are also welcome Aaron Rupar, Keith Olbermann, Tony Webster.

Insider reached Musk and Mastodon representatives but they did not immediately respond.

This is still a developing story. Please keep checking back for new updates.