Some legal experts say Twitter could face regulatory scrutiny for blocking links to Mastodon
how the company shut down links to Vine. But the judge threw out that part of the complaint (now on appeal in the state's case) https://twitter.com/... Rand Fishkin / @randfish : If it wasn't a solid alternative that lots of folks are using, he wouldn't be blocking it. That alone should convince you. https://www.cnn.com/... https://twitter.com/... Brian Fung / @b_fung : Does Twitter blocking Mastodon links constitute anticompetitive behavior against a nascent rival? I asked a couple of legal experts, including Bill Baer, the former antitrust chief at DOJ and FTC in two US administrations. Here's what they say: https://www.cnn.com/... @carnage4life : If links to Mastodon are being blocked, I guess that answers the question on whether usage metrics are declining. Max Kennerly / @maxkennerly : Took only a month for Elon to change his view on Mastodon from being joke worthy to posing such a grave threat to Twitter that he's blocking every link to every server he can find. https://twitter.com/... Jason Kint / @jason_kint : So linking to mastodon appears now forbidden. The Mastodon account is fully suspended. If you share on Twitter that it's still possible to go to Mastodon and search for the Elon+Jet account and look up publicly available info then I presume it's ok. But 🤷🏻♂️ - his platform, rules. See also Mediagazer
CNNBrian Fung
Context & Ripple Effects
The legal question follows Twitter's suspension of Mastodon's account and restriction of Mastodon URLs, an action that limited both public sharing and profile-based discovery of the rival service. The related Vine dispute also shows that Twitter's treatment of outbound links had already entered litigation, even though the relevant portion of that complaint was dismissed and is on appeal.
The episode matters as an early test of whether a platform's control over its distribution layer can be examined as conduct against an emerging competitor rather than treated solely as content moderation.
First-order effects
Mastodon users and Twitter users lose a direct route for sharing Mastodon servers and adding those destinations to Twitter profiles.
Twitter faces the prospect of DOJ or FTC scrutiny over whether blocking links to a nascent rival is anticompetitive conduct; the article reports expert views, not an announced investigation.
Twitter's later cutoff of Movetodon's follower-migration tool shows how restrictions on links and interoperability can jointly raise switching friction for users moving to Mastodon.
Third-order effects
If link blocking and ranking changes are treated as competition issues, platforms' nominal allowance of outside services will matter less than whether users can practically discover and move to them.
The durable fault line is likely to be control of distribution routes: platforms can shape competitive access through moderation, ranking, links, and API rules without changing the underlying service market.
The trend: Platform competition is increasingly being contested through the usability of outbound links, ranking, and migration tools rather than only through product features.
Twitter suspends Mastodon's account and bans Mastodon links, calling them “harmful” and “malware”, after Mastodon tweeted a jet tracking account on its service
@AmyMarxkors I don't want Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, or any other dudes of this ilk deciding what can and can't be said on the internet's biggest platforms through their whims or opaque internal processes. And neither should you. It breeds anger, uncertainty, and di…
@Sherman1890 Very fair. I think you could make an argument that they dominate some kind of microblogging social network, but then you'd need to argue it's fundamentally different from other social networking like FB.
“If Twitter has market power, it may have some duties to deal with competitors,” Slaiman said. “Duties to deal is an area of antitrust law that I think is really important in the tech sector, but has been aggressively narrowed” in recent decades." https://www.cnn.com/...
@leah_nylen Okay but if its a unilateral strategy it would require that Twitter be a dominant firm. That was the premise in FB. What does Twitter dominate?
Just spitballing here, but isn't Twitter blocking links to *competing* websites like Post and Mastodon exactly the kind of thing that would get the juices flowing at the FTC?
If it wasn't a solid alternative that lots of folks are using, he wouldn't be blocking it. That alone should convince you. https://www.cnn.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Does Twitter blocking Mastodon links constitute anticompetitive behavior against a nascent rival? I asked a couple of legal experts, including Bill Baer, the former antitrust chief at DOJ and FTC in two US administrations. Here's what they say: https://www.cnn.com/...
@AmyMarxkors It has been clear for years that social media platforms have centralized power in the hands of wealthy elites who are not accountable to the public and whose moderation decisions lack consistency and transparency. Musk has just made this extremely obvious, but it's n…
Actually yes. This was a part of the FTC's original case against Facebook — how the company shut down links to Vine. But the judge threw out that part of the complaint (now on appeal in the state's case) https://twitter.com/...
Took only a month for Elon to change his view on Mastodon from being joke worthy to posing such a grave threat to Twitter that he's blocking every link to every server he can find. https://twitter.com/...
So linking to mastodon appears now forbidden. The Mastodon account is fully suspended. If you share on Twitter that it's still possible to go to Mastodon and search for the Elon+Jet account and look up publicly available info then I presume it's ok. But 🤷🏻♂️ - his platform, rule…