Several prominent US journalists who recently wrote about Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk have found their accounts suspended on the social media platform on Thursday without explanation, media report.
Twitter suspended the accounts belonging to CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, the Washington Post’s Drew Harwell, the New York Times’ Ryan Mac, Mashable reporter Matt Binder, and several other tech journalists were all abruptly suspended.
It has, however, also suspended the independent journalist Aaron Rupar, who covers US policy and politics, and the official account of Mastodon, which, since Musk’s takeover of the platform, has emerged as an alternative to Twitter.
Once famously claiming that he hopes to keep on Twitter his harshest critics due to free speech, Musk now seems that doesn’t even want on the social media platform journalists who report on him.
He, however, pointed out that doxing – a reference to Twitter rules banning the sharing of personal information- was the reason for the suspension, stressing in a tweet that journalists are no exception to the rules banning the publishing of personal information.
Musk was referring to Wednesday’s suspension on Twitter of @elonjet, an account that used data available in the public domain to track his private jet in real-time after he had threatened the account’s operator with legal action.
In its updated policy on Wednesday, Twitter prohibited the sharing of live location information.
It remains unclear, however, whether the suspended journalists had shared news about @elonjet or commented on one.
Musk tweeted on Thursday he’s totally fine with being criticized at all times, but he drew a line with doxxing his real-time location and endangering his family, announcing there would be a seven-day suspension for doxing.
After some 43% of Twitter users voted for immediate reinstating of the doxxed accounts after the poll he set on the reinstating accounts, Musk noted he’ll redo it since the poll had offered too many options.
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