Paul Graham, a well-known and respected venture financier who has backed Elon Musk’s Twitter endeavors got his account banned on Sunday.
The suspension followed a tweet in which Graham wrote: “This is the last straw. I give up. You can find a link to my new Mastodon profile on my site.”
He highlighted a recent Twitter rule prohibiting users from linking to alternative social networking sites like Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Post, and Nostr in his tweet.
Moreover, that policy also restricted utilizing ways to get around the rule like composing “Instagram dot com/username” to avoid creating an actual link
It appears Graham’s account was suspended because he wrote, “You can find a link to my new Mastodon profile on my site.” Twitter might regard that as an example of a workaround.
When Fortune contacted Twitter but it didn’t receive an immediate reply, but Graham’s account was restored after Fortune approached the microblogging platform.
Technology author Gergely Orosz noted the suspension on his own Twitter account, writing, “Paul Graham – founder of Y Combinator, and someone supportive of Elon Musk since the Twitter takeover – announced he’s taking a break from Twitter, and suggested people can find his Mastodon account on his website. He was banned a few hours later. I cannot believe it…”
Howard Lerman, a co-founder of several tech startups, also expressed surprise, tweeting: “Paul Graham (formerly @paulg) defines every attribute one could hope for on a social network: Profound, civil, thoughtful, honest, direct, polite, active, responsive to all, inclusive. I’m sure I missed a lot of things he is. And I’m going to him him on here.”
Graham continued to be typically diplomatic over on Mastodon, which seems frequently regarded as a substitute for Twitter by people fed up with Musk’s chaos, writing: “I haven’t ‘left Twitter.’ I just don’t want to keep using it while it’s banning links to other sites. Plus given the way things are going, it seemed like a good time to learn more about Mastodon.”
He added, “FWIW I still hope Elon succeeds with Twitter. Why wish failure on anyone? But for me, not letting people post links to their other accounts was just too much.”
Others also expressed their thought on the banned. The founder and general partner of VC firm 776, Alexis Ohanian, remarked Graham’s prestige as Silicon Valley “royalty.” He tweeted Sunday: “Wild. @PaulG got suspended (for *sending folks to his website for a link to his mastodon). This is gonna get really, really interesting. PG is SV royalty.”