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2013 called and it wants its social media links back.

share pop up's Twitter and Facebook icons

The social media landscape has grown far more varied, controversial, and complex in the past decade, but Stack Exchange still seems to promote a select few without any apparent rhyme or reason (other than legacy).

The "Share" button has quick links to Facebook and "Twitter" (as pictured above), but not Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, Parler, Tumblr, or Truth Social.

In user profiles, Stack Exchange has space for three links:

  • A generic website link
  • 𝕏
  • A GitHub profile
Screenshot of Links user-interface, with text boxes for a website link, an X link, and a GitHub link

The generic website link is useful for just about anybody... but why, in 2025, is 𝕏 (née Twitter) the sole social media site for profiles?

And while GitHub makes sense for some of the more technical sites, shouldn't Beer, Wine & Spirits allow a link to Untappd, etc? Why would Gardening & Landscaping users want to link to their GitHub profile? It feels like we are implicitly telling our non-technical sites that they are second-class.

Now that Twitter has rebranded itself to "𝕏" and these logos/names/links need to be updated anyway (some updates have been made since this question was first posted), perhaps it's time to reconsider the prominence of certain social media sites over all others.

For the Share pop up, I propose removing the social media links entirely.

We already have a handy "Copy link" button which works for anything from micro-blogging to SMS.

For User Profiles, I propose one of the following solutions:

1. Remove the social media link completely.

We have a rich text About Me section where users can add whatever links they want.

2. Rename the "Twitter" link to "Social media"

If users want to keep the link, or if it's too tightly entwined in code or UI designs to be easily removed, then can we just rename it and let users put a link to whatever social media site they prefer?

3. Add arbitrarily many links

Give users the ability to add arbitrary links (up to some reasonable limit). This might be friendlier to non-technical Stack Exchange sites where GitHub is totally irrelevant.

If we care about icons, it would not be difficult to grab the site's favicon or use an appropriate pre-determined icon based on the domain (e.g. x.com, github.com, bsky.app, defaulting to a basic link icon)

Note: This post was inspired by the accepted answer to Add a Mastodon link in addition to Twitter?.

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  • Talking about icons, can't just Stack Exchange scrap the favicon from the link? Or that seems impossible? Commented Jul 10, 2023 at 18:01
  • Scrapping favicons is suprisingly tricky. There are lots of possible places to look. Commented Jul 10, 2023 at 19:05
  • 1
    I think proposal 3 is probably the best way to go. Commented Jul 10, 2023 at 19:23
  • 27
    I think #3 makes sense, but it would be more work. #2 is nice and simple to implement. Commented Jul 10, 2023 at 21:06
  • And also does not break previously created profiles Commented Jul 11, 2023 at 5:36
  • 5
    Good idea! Maybe replace it with LinkedIn or some other professional site, one that an expert might use. Commented Jul 11, 2023 at 9:41
  • @sonic - This is a feature-request and should be judged as a feature-request. Any particular reason you added the discussion tag? Commented Jul 14, 2023 at 20:38
  • 2
    Your question doesn't propose a single, specific solution. You ask for something out of three solutions to be done (which is why I kept the feature-request tag instead of removing it), but there's still an open discussion of which of the three solutions should be implemented. Commented Jul 14, 2023 at 20:39
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    @SonictheAnonymousHedgehog - Thanks. I'll keep that in mind for the future. My single specific request is to remove the prominence of a single social network, but yes... I'm open to a discussion about how best to do that. Commented Jul 14, 2023 at 21:22
  • This is more important if Twitter starts charging all users! $$$ Commented Sep 19, 2023 at 17:40
  • I think Github does this well on a user's profile page. I'd be very happy if the same interface was available on here. Commented Sep 28, 2023 at 13:11
  • 1
    See also: Remove X/Twitter links from user profiles on MSO Commented Jan 22 at 9:35
  • 1
    #3 - but with support for "common" links. So if someone links their LinkedIn, then show a LinkedIn icon. (Or Reddit, X, Insta, Mastodon, BlueSky etc etc). If an unknown site is provided, just use a default link icon. Commented Jan 22 at 9:42
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    @Robotnik Could you post that as an answer? Commented Jan 22 at 9:44
  • If they want to get truly special, on the Share popup, show links to post on the sites you've specified in your profile Commented Jan 22 at 9:44

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
9

I'd like a combination of 2 and 3, where the default labels remain (except for GitHub on some sites?), but you can add some arbitrary links with custom labels as well. I'm not an interface designer, but I don't think this would be too difficult to implement.

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  • 2
    A label isn't really necessary (where would you display it?), but an icon could be useful (so other users have some sense of what they are clicking on). However, I believe it would be better to have an icon selected based on the link, otherwise you could end up with a Facebook icon that links to a blog pushing supplements. Commented Jul 14, 2023 at 21:25
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    @JDB a label could be placed anywhere near the link, and could be helpful in case someone doens't recognize the icon. Commented Jul 14, 2023 at 21:30
  • 7
    label/content pairs appears to be how they do it over on Mastodon, for what it's worth. So we wouldn't be reinventing the wheel here. Commented Aug 7, 2023 at 9:04
  • FYI, based on linked questions, etc, I've expanded the scope of my post to include social media links outside of just the user profile (in case you want to/feel like updating your answer) Commented Sep 18, 2023 at 13:23
8

If 2 or 3 then please also set rel="me" for Mastodon 🙏🏻

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  • Agree it should be added to the links, but FYI that is 20 years old and long predates mastodon. ufs.cc/w/relme Commented Jan 22 at 16:34
5
  1. No.
  2. Maybe.
  3. Yes. They should have a couple icons from the most prevalent social media sites and use them as image links while having either displaying the full link or some default image for anything else.
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  • FYI, based on linked questions, etc, I've expanded the scope of my post to include social media links outside of just the user profile (in case you want to/feel like updating your answer) Commented Sep 18, 2023 at 13:23
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+50

I agree with the intention of not singling out any one platform, especially one that’s become as toxic as Twitter. Definitely get rid of the icons on the share box as well (they seem particularly useless in any case; who is sharing SE content on Facebook?)

For the profile page, from a technical perspective, #2 is the most feasible solution.

#1 would involve a DB schema change, and would also result in a loss of data on a user’s profile page.

#3 would mean an even bigger schema change, moving from a one-to-one relationship (ie a column in the user table) to a one-to-many relationship (ie a new table with foreign keys linking back to the user table.)

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