Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk made a significant effort Thursday night to use his unilateral authority over the network to censor speech when he abruptly blocked the accounts of several prominent journalists from leading news organizations.
Donie O’Sullivan’s accounts of CNNRyan Mac from The New York Times, Drew Harwell of The Washington Post and other journalists who have been actively covering Musk in recent weeks have all been abruptly and permanently suspended. In addition, the account of progressive independent journalist Aaron Rupar was blocked.
A request for comment on Thursday night was not answered by Musk or Twitter, and the exclusion of the journalists from the network was not made clear by the platform. The journalists, according to Musk, had shared his live location, which amounted to what he called “kill coordinates,” in violation of his new “doxxing” policy. CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan did not disclose the billionaire’s live location.
Shortly before his suspension, O’Sullivan posted on Twitter that the social media platform had suspended the account of Mastodon, an up-and-coming rival social media platform, causing @ElonJet, an account that updates the location of Musk’s private jet, to continue tweeting. Other journalists were suspended. Recently, Thursday had written about the incident.
Doxxing discloses an individual’s home address or other private information online. Instead, the banned user had tracked Musk’s plane using freely available flight data that is still available online. The restrictions raise several concerns about the future of the platform, which has been dubbed a “digital city square.” Musk’s censorship of journalists raised serious concerns about his alleged support for free speech.
Musk has repeatedly stated that he wants to allow all legitimate expression on the platform. He had tweeted: “I hope even my strongest detractors stay on Twitter because that’s what freedom of speech means” in April, the same day he announced he would buy Twitter. According to a CNN representative, the company has questioned Twitter and will “re-evaluate our partnership based on that response.”
“It is alarming but not unexpected that several reporters, including CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, were abruptly and unfairly suspended. Anyone using Twitter should be very concerned about Twitter’s growing instability and volatility, the rep said.
The bulk bans were described as “questionable and unfortunate” by a New York Times spokesperson, who also stated that neither the newspaper nor Ryan had explained what happened. We expect Twitter to reinstate all journalist accounts and provide compelling justification for its decision.
Harwell told CNN Thursday that Elon “claims to be an advocate of freedom of speech and bans journalists from exercising freedom of speech.” “I think that’s worrying about his commitment.” Rupar agreed that he had heard “nothing” about Twitter’s suspension.
The head of the American Civil Liberties Union said: “It is impossible to reconcile Twitter’s freedom of expression with the removal of critical journalist accounts.” Several organizations criticized Twitter’s move. The suspensions “affect all journalists,That says the chairman of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), who also expressed his concern about them in a statement.
After Twitter announced new rules blocking accounts that track users’ real-time whereabouts, the @ElonJet account, which had accumulated more than 500,000 followers, was permanently suspended on Wednesday. Musk also deleted all accounts that contained links to such data. Previously, Twitter had no restrictions on location sharing.
The changes followed Musk’s decision to reinstate previous Twitter policy violators and stop enforcing restrictions on Covid-19 disinformation. O’Sullivan told CNN on Thursday after his account was blocked, “I do believe this is very important for the potentially chilling impact this could have on freelance journalists, independent journalists around the world, especially those covering Elon Musk’s other companies, like Tesla and SpaceX.”
Some Twitter users said the site started interfering when they tried to post links to their profiles on competing social networks, such as Mastodon, as the buzz over the account bans grew. A CNN reporter prevented a Mastodon profile URL from being shared and received an automated error message saying Twitter or its partners had deemed the site “potentially dangerous” Thursday night, confirming those rumors.
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