The Brief: The phrase "no free clout" refers to when someone deletes their tweet because they are upset someone is getting likes from quote tweeting it.

Bluesquiggle
DEEP DIVE

“No free clout” is a line that may be tweeted after someone deletes their original tweet to prevent someone else from gaining “free” clout by quote tweeting it. On Twitter, users have the option to either retweet posts or to quote tweet them. With a retweet, the likes on the post are designated to the OP, but with a quote tweet, which requires someone to add a comment of their own, the likes go to the account that posted the quote tweet.

The phrase “no free clout” reflects the idea that people may quote tweet something because they are trying to leech off of someone else’s OC. The act of deleting an original tweet as retaliation towards a clout chaser quote tweeting it, although not uncommon, is definitively petty, especially since the OP will no longer receive any clout of their own after the post is deleted.

Sometimes, people post screenshots of this deletion with the caption “no free clout.” In the first picture, someone has a popular quote tweet, but in the second screenshot, since the original post has been deleted, only their comment and a missing link remain. Although this person still has however many likes they received before the tweet was deleted, it’s unlikely that they’ll receive many more since the quoted tweet is now gone.

This phenomenon demonstrates how far some people will go to stop others from earning internet points from content that they didn’t directly create.