Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn have something in common: When you reference anything online, posting a link to it is hard or impossible. These platforms make it as hard and unattractive as possible to give attribution or link to somewhere with additional information. I was reminded of this today when I read Simon Willison’s post today on this topic, I agree with his conclusion, and I think the topic deserves a few more words than he used. His words:

[…] TikTok […] LinkedIn and Twitter […] algorithmically de-boost anything with a URL in it, encouraging users to share screenshots (often unsourced) rather than linking to content and reducing their distribution.

It’s gross.

Let’s explore why this is happening, why it is bad, and what we should do about it!

Why are “social” platforms fighting links?

The answer comes almost effortlessly when we examine the kind of link “social” platforms sabotage: links pointing outside the platform, links that take the user elsewhere. Let’s quickly dive into this!

On Instagram, if you want to link to anything that is not a profile, post, or story, you have three ways to do so:

1. Put the link in your bio. Instagram’s only link field allows you to publicly show a link to your followers. This link is visible only on your profile, not on any post.

2. Post a story and post the link into it as a sticker. Instagram deletes stories after one day, and with them, the links they contain.

3. Buy an Instagram ad that points to your link. The ad will show in the main feed and is, as far as I know, the only way to post a link into the main feed. This is also an ephemeral method, as your ad will only show up while you pay—effectively, you pay to be allowed to post a link.

Platforms fight for attention and screen time. The more time you spend on a platform, the bigger the chance it can monetize your attention — for example, via ads or by guiding you to visit their shop or marketplace. Links pulling you away from their feed are bad for their business, which is to sell your attention to the highest bidder.

So what. Why should I care?

The short answer is “enshittification.” The term describes the gradual change of a product to align it more with short-term financial goals than with the user’s interests. In the long term, enshittification weakens a product and makes room for competition unless the product reaches monopoly status before becoming too horrible to gain more users. Suppose it grows to monopoly status like Instagram and TikTok. In that case, it just squeezes users for money and attention without the downside of users leaving because they dislike the product.

When platforms block links to the rest of the internet, the intention is to keep users engaged on the platform instead of spending their time elsewhere. However, the actual result is different, as we’ll explore later.

Here are some examples of link-blocking by Instagram. Remember that Instagram is by no means the only platform doing this.

1—Imagine you find a post you’re interested in. It is from a few days ago, and it contains the well-known phrase “link in bio”. You want to learn more, you navigate to the user’s profile and open the link, only to discover that the link has been replaced with another link for a more recent post that also references the “link in bio”. You’ve just had a bad experience.

2 — Alternatively, some profiles reference link collections, such as YouTube playlists and websites mirroring the Instagram profile. To access the link for a specific post, you visit the third-party website with a duplicate of all the user’s posts; once on that intermediary page, you have to search for the content you want to find the link for. And only after these additional steps can you finally click the link and visit the website. You’ve just had a bad experience that can feel like punishment for daring to venture out of the platform’s bubble.

Your experience was enshittified because the platform did not allow posting links. It likely prevented external links because it wanted you to stay and look at more ads or buy something in its shop. Is that all? Probably no.

“Shadow-Banning” links?

I hate the term “shadow-ban” because it is often used by right-wing political users to accuse a platform of hiding their posts from a wider audience while avoiding the controversy of blocking their accounts outright. However, this term lends itself quite well to a rumor I want to explore.

So far, what I wrote was established fact. Let’s examine one persistent rumor and try to understand what is happening and why it might look like something else. The rumor is that platforms like LinkedIn and others punish users for including external links in their posts by not showing them as often. The rumor accuses platforms of un-promoting these posts, making them appear less frequently in other users’ timelines.

The rumor sounds plausible at first glance. It would follow the same motivation as banning links outright to prevent people from going elsewhere on the internet. However, this explanation ignores some simple aspects that could explain why posts with external links perform worse than those without them. I’ll use an example to illustrate this:

Imagine you scroll(ed) through Mastodon, Threads, Twitter,^[1] or a similar platform that allows users to post text-based short-form content. One post catches your eye. It’s about something that interests you and contains a link that promises more information, so you click/tap on that link and visit that website.

1. Will you return to the post after to like and share it?

2. Would you have liked and shared the post if it had contained a summary but no link?

As you can see, maybe the reason posts with links perform worse on some platforms isn’t that the platform is “shadow-banning” or “un-promoting” them. The explanation could be as simple as people who like those posts clicking the links and then forgetting to like and share the post — or decide to post a link to the website themselves rather than sharing someone else’s post.

Meta-Problems with link-banning

As a result of “social” platforms' unfriendly linking policies, we see more and more stolen content. People post screenshots and stolen video clips of things they want to re-share instead of posting a link to the original content. And they are actively hindered when they try to give attribution by including a link to the source with their stolen content. Often, these stolen posts are re-distributed without naming their creator. Our modern “social” platforms encourage this behavior, as it means their users, you, don’t go elsewhere for the content.

The founding idea of the internet was and still is that of referencing and linking from one website to another to enable collaboration and the exchange of knowledge. This idea has been attacked and defended ever since the internet was invented. Platforms making it hard for people to post links to places on the internet other than the platform itself behave unethically and anti-competitively, in my book. They intentionally make the internet a worse place to make money.^[2]

What to do about it?

Don’t use the platforms. Okay, but really? It’s an unfortunate reality that “social” media has a near complete monopoly on attention, and to reach an audience online, you need to play the game. What you don’t need to do is create original content for “social” platforms — especially for free! And what you shouldn’t do is steal content and post it on your own account.

When you post, ask yourself: Is that platform rewarding you for creating and posting this content, or are you just letting yourself be used by a multi-billion euro company as a content monkey they can profit off?

Your first target should always be a website you own and control. You should then distribute teasers for your content to “social” media and link to your website. Avoid giving away content for free to platforms that do not pay for it.

If running your own website does not align with your content, or you’re just a casual user, consider this: When you see stolen content on any platform, call it out! Comment on it, mentioning the original creator of the content, if you know them, and flag the post using content moderation tools. By simply consuming stolen content, you reward the platform for enabling theft.

⌞w⌝