Twitter terminated the accounts of a new competitor named Mastodon and several well-known journalists who wrote about Twitter’s billionaire owner, Elon Musk.
Late Thursday, journalists from newspapers such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, Mashable and CNN were banned and their tweets were no longer visible.
Mr Musk stated that the suspended profiles, including sports and political pundit Keith Olbermann, were of individuals who broadcast his real-time position, describing the data as “essentially murder coordinates”.
“Nobody told me anything. Ryan Mac, a reporter for The New York Times, tweeted from a new account that he hadn’t heard from the company about why he was suspended.
He posted a screenshot of the app saying he was banned for good. “I write about Twitter, Elon Musk and the companies he owns. And I will continue to do that.”
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The unpredictable owner of the service then asked his followers when they thought he should lift the bans. Doxxing, which transmits personal location information, is normally banned from the service for seven days, he said.
Drew Harwell of the Washington Post and other exiled reporters were able to participate in a Twitter Spaces audio session while in exile. This showed that Twitter rules are not always followed.
Mastodon, a rival social network, tweeted a link on its Twitter page to an account on its own service that uses publicly available flight data to track Mr Musk’s private jet, prompting Twitter to shut down Mastodon‘s feed.
On Wednesday, Twitter shut down a few accounts tracking the locations of private jets, including Mr. Musk.
Mr Musk, who has said he is an “absolute free speech absolutist” and who took over Twitter to get rid of censorship, tweeted that “doxxing rules apply to ‘journalists’ just like everyone else. “
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Paul Barrett, deputy director of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, said, “This is management as dark performance art.”
“Mr. Musk shows us how dangerous every day [and self-destructive] it’s so much corporate power to be in the hands of a few Silicon Valley moguls.
CNN, whose reporter was among those suspended, said: “The hasty and unjustified suspension of a number of reporters, including those from CNN, Donie O’Sullivanis worrying but not surprising.”
“Anyone using Twitter should be very concerned about how unstable and unpredictable the platform is becoming. We’ve asked Twitter for an explanation, and based on what they say, we’ll rethink our relationship.
When I emailed Twitter asking for comment on the journalists’ suspensions, I didn’t immediately hear back.
