Reuters, Dec. 15 – On Thursday, Twitter suspended the accounts of numerous notable journalists over articles they recently published about the company’s new owner, Elon Musk. Musk, a billionaire, tweeted that the rules prohibiting the publication of personal information apply to everyone, including journalists.
Musk, who has portrayed himself as a free speech absolutist, responded to a tweet about the suspensions by tweeting, “The same doxxing rules apply to ‘journalists’ as they do to everyone else.” This was in reference to Twitter’s rules prohibiting the publishing of personal information, known as doxxing.
Musk tweeted Wednesday about the shutdown of @elonjet on Twitter, which tracked his private jet in real time using public data. Musk accused his son of being the target of a “crazy stalker” and threatened legal action against the account’s administrator.
It was not immediately clear whether all suspended journalists had used @elonjet to discuss or distribute news. Criticizing Musk all day is acceptable, but doxxing his real-time whereabouts and endangering his family is not, he tweeted Thursday.
Last month, he tweeted that he “wouldn’t even block the account that tracks my plane, even if that’s an obvious personal security risk,” demonstrating his commitment to free speech. On Thursday, he announced via Twitter that doxxing will result in a seven-day automatic ban, and then conducted a poll asking Twitter users to determine whether or not the accounts should be reinstated immediately.
When the poll results showed that the largest percentage of respondents (43%) wanted accounts restored immediately, he said he had given too many choices and would run the poll again. When asked for comment, Twitter didn’t immediately get back to us.
Similar chaotic activity has unfolded at Twitter after Musk took over, including the rapid firing of senior management and thousands of employees, price swings for Twitter’s premium service, Twitter Blue, and the reactivation of banned accounts, including that of former President Donald Trump.
Twitter’s new head of trust and security, Ella Irwintold Reuters last month that the company now relies primarily on technology to censor content, eliminating some manual checks and favoring restrictions on distribution rather than banning certain speech altogether.
‘DOUBTFUL AND UNHAPPY’
Washington Post reporter Drew Harwell (@drewharwell)’s Mastodon account was suspended Thursday along with those of other journalists for posting links to “publicly available, legally obtained data.” Mastodon, a popular alternative to Twitter, had also suspended its official account on Twitter (@joinmastodon).
In the short term, it was impossible to get a response from Mastodon. The editor-in-chief of The Post, Sally Buzzbeeargued that Musk’s statements that he intended to operate Twitter as a free speech platform were contradicted by Harwell’s suspension.
Late Thursday night, Harwell was allowed to participate in a Twitter discussion with other journalists, including Musk, who appeared briefly. ‘If you dox, you will be expelled from school. This is the last chapter” Musk stated in the thread while Harwell denied revealing Musk’s real-time position, claiming instead that he had only written about @elonjet.
Twitter announced a new policy on Wednesday that prevents users from “vividly” disclosing their whereabouts. Independent American political and policy writer Aaron Rupar (@atrupar)’s account was suspended, along with those of Times reporter Ryan Mac (@rmac18), CNN reporter Donie O’Sullivan (@donie) and Mashable reporter Matt Binder ( @MattBinder).
Jack Sweeney, the 20-year-old behind the @elonjet Twitter account, was recently interviewed by Mac, who also posted multiple threads about the account’s suspension. The New York Times issued a statement calling the suspensions “questionable and troubling.”
The Times and Ryan have not heard an explanation for this. All of the journalists’ accounts must be reinstated and Twitter must provide adequate justification for their suspension.” According to a statement from CNN, the network has reached out to Twitter for an explanation of the bans and will reconsider its partnership with the social media site once it receives it.
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