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I recently checked my personal information and saw that there still is a possibility to add a link to twitter account.

Question:
Should the fact that twitter is now $\mathbb{X}$ and not so "idealistic" anymore be reflected in the input fields for personal information?
The options I see would be to just change the name and logo or, because of the negative developments, to entirely remove the twitter/$\mathbb{X}$ field so that it is not available for furure edits of personal profiles.

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    $\begingroup$ Somewhat related (July 2023): Is it time to reconsider Social Media links in "Share" and User Profiles, etc? And perhaps also this answer: Community Asks Sprint Announcement and Results - September 2024. $\endgroup$ Commented Nov 5 at 17:51
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    $\begingroup$ Whatever my own personal view of X/Twitter, or the views or experiences of others, people really still do use it. $\endgroup$
    – David Roberts Mod
    Commented Nov 6 at 0:08
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    $\begingroup$ It is better to link to a site with content related to MO, and Twitter was never a good platform for posting mathematical content. $\endgroup$ Commented Nov 6 at 3:59
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    $\begingroup$ @JosephVanName the functionality is at the Stack Exchange level, and there are many more communities on here than MO. And, for better or worse, Twitter has been an online public square for pretty much the entire lifetime of the SE network and its individual precursors (like StackOverflow, MO etc). $\endgroup$
    – David Roberts Mod
    Commented Nov 6 at 5:09
  • $\begingroup$ That said, an outright "social media account" field seems reasonable, but I can imagine that if SE wants to validate the input as being a social media site (difficult for mastodon!) this is nontrivial. And this is only something that people can take up with SE say on the network meta site. Getting support here for such an interface change will be a drop in the bucket of the collective network users. $\endgroup$
    – David Roberts Mod
    Commented Nov 6 at 5:11
  • $\begingroup$ I think we should allow people to put anything they want in their bio (as long as it otherwise comports with TOS, i.e. is not hateful, is not spam, et cetera). $\endgroup$ Commented Nov 7 at 2:53
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    $\begingroup$ @SamHopkins it is not about what the peple enter as their information; it is about the input field that is dedicated solely to twitter $\endgroup$ Commented Nov 7 at 4:32
  • $\begingroup$ Ahhh okay I understand now. Thanks for the clarification. That indeed makes me feel differently (as though MO itself is endorsing the platform) $\endgroup$ Commented Nov 7 at 4:36
  • $\begingroup$ @DavidRoberts That is not correct; we have an option to hide the Twitter field for MO only, irrespective of what the SE network chooses to do. The MO / SE agreement allows us to make "reasonable adjustments to the operation of [MathOverflow] by means of extra clientside JavaScript". If I am not mistaken, we are already using this method to hide reputation. $\endgroup$ Commented Nov 7 at 13:15
  • $\begingroup$ @FedericoPoloni ah, I see. I guess people who have a X/Twitter handle in their bio will still display it? But in the edit profile form it will no longer be visible? We are hiding reputation by default using this mechanism, as you suspect. $\endgroup$
    – David Roberts Mod
    Commented Nov 7 at 23:48
  • $\begingroup$ @DavidRoberts We can block it from displaying in the user profile page, too; it should be one line of Javascript/Jquery. And actually I think it's a more effective solution than preventing people from editing their profile: otherwise, one could always circumvent the editing block by editing their profile on another SE site and then use the "copy profile" option to import it into their MO profile. $\endgroup$ Commented Nov 8 at 7:20
  • $\begingroup$ I guess people could be warned, and they can choose to copy a link to their handle in the plain text description. I worry about unilaterally removing links to people's (presumably) professional account as they might rely on it as a means people can contact them, find out more about them etc. $\endgroup$
    – David Roberts Mod
    Commented Nov 9 at 2:28

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