You're right about those users not being summarily banned. But it's still interesting what happens when you try to click one of those Mastodon links...

What is interesting about landing on https://mastodon.social/@elonjet ? I just did it. Not even a warning 'you are opening a link', like many sane apps do, including mine.

There is a warning, I’ve just tried that. You can ignore it and continue.

> it's still interesting what happens when you try to click one of those Mastodon links...

For those who Nitterize their Twitter: Twitter sends Mastadon clicks to a Unsafe Link Warning page.

Man. I'm kind of in awe of Musk's limitless ability to diminish himself.

> Twitter sends Mastadon clicks to a Unsafe Link Warning page.

At the moment, it doesn't. If you don't believe me on my word, I can record a screen capture video for you.

I clicked on the link and it sent me to the warning page. Do you want me to record a screen capture video for you?

Edit: Adding screen capture: https://imgur.io/a/RGk5Jx6

This sounds to me like there might be some A/B testing going on.

I was talking about clicking on a link from a desktop browser. No warning at all.

...and on mobile it is beyond sensible to make a warning when leaving to view external links: mobile apps and mobile browsers do do not have the capability to show the exact url you are about to open (in desktop you call hover over a link), which can lead to all sorts of bad things, first of which is spoofing your ip address.

Hell, even we in our open source xmpp clients show a mandatory warning with full URL you are about to open, so you know where you will land. This is a safety feature, not malice! (I'd actually add it to desktop web version of Twitter too)

> on mobile it is beyond sensible to make a warning when leaving to view external links: mobile apps and mobile browsers do do not have the capability to show the exact url you are about to open (in desktop you call hover over a link), which can lead to all sorts of bad things, first of which is spoofing your ip address.

Informing your users that they are being redirected to an external link is very different from blatantly lying to them about your competitor. The text of the warning explicitly says that mastodon is “spammy or unsafe”.

I am pretty sure if someone pastes a discord link in your xmpp client, you’ll not say that Discord is spammy or unsafe. You’ll just inform the user that they are being led to an external link.

Twitter was showing such warnings for external links long before Musk took over. Here [0] is the link to an article from May 2020, discussing this very thing.

[0]: https://wptavern.com/bringing-back-blogs-in-the-age-of-socia...

>> Anyone who posts Mastadon links are being banned regardless of political affiliations.

> This is simply not true, just search Mastodon.social links on Twitter via this link,

As referenced by phoe-krk above, Twitter appears to be blocking Mastadon addresses in bios, not in tweets. That makes it a slightly different scumbaggery than we thought.

I find the BBC headline is confusing; it says users are blocked for 'Sharing' Mastadon links, which sort of (wrongly) hints that one can't tweet Mastadon links.