Elon Musk said on Saturday he’ll reinstate the Twitter accounts of several journalists that were suspended in an argument over publishing public data in regards to the billionaire’ s plane. Seen here is an illustration of Musk and the Twitter logo in Brussels, Belgium.
Jonathan Raa | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Elon Musk reinstated the Twitter accounts of several journalists that were suspended for a day over an argument on publishing public data in regards to the billionaire’s plane.
The reinstatements got here after the unprecedented suspensions evoked stinging criticism from government officials, advocacy groups and journalism organizations from several parts of the globe on Friday, with some saying the microblogging platform was jeopardizing press freedom.
A Twitter poll that Musk conducted later also showed that a majority of the respondents wanted the accounts restored immediately.
“The people have spoken. Accounts who doxxed my location can have their suspension lifted now,” Musk said in a tweet on Saturday.
Twitter didn’t immediately reply to a Reuters request for comment. A Reuters check showed the suspended accounts, which included journalists from the Recent York Times, CNN and the Washington Post, have been reinstated.
Officials from France, Germany, Britain and the European Union earlier condemned the suspensions.
The episode, which one well-known security researcher labeled the “Thursday Night Massacre,” is being regarded by critics as fresh evidence of Musk, who considers himself a “free speech absolutist,” eliminating speech and users he personally dislikes.
Shares in Tesla, an electrical automobile maker led by Musk, slumped 4.7% on Friday and posted their worst weekly loss since March 2020, with investors increasingly concerned about his being distracted and in regards to the slowing global economy.
Roland Lescure, the French minister of industry, tweeted on Friday that, following Musk’s suspension of journalists, he would suspend his own activity on Twitter.
Melissa Fleming, head of communications for the United Nations, tweeted she was “deeply disturbed” by the suspensions and that “media freedom is just not a toy.”
The German Foreign Office warned Twitter that the ministry had an issue with moves that jeopardized press freedom.
ElonJet
The suspensions stemmed from a disagreement over a Twitter account called ElonJet, which tracked Musk’s private plane using publicly available information.
On Wednesday, Twitter suspended the account and others that tracked private jets, despite Musk’s previous tweet saying he wouldn’t suspend ElonJet within the name of free speech.
Shortly after, Twitter modified its privacy policy to ban the sharing of “live location information.”
Then on Thursday evening, several journalists, including from the Recent York Times, CNN and the Washington Post, were suspended from Twitter with no notice.
In an email to Reuters overnight, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, said the team manually reviewed “any and all accounts” that violated the brand new privacy policy by posting direct links to the ElonJet account.
“I understand that the main target appears to be mainly on journalist accounts, but we applied the policy equally to journalists and non-journalist accounts today,” Irwin said in the e-mail.
The Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing said in a press release on Friday that Twitter’s actions “violate the spirit of the First Amendment and the principle that social media platforms will allow the unfiltered distribution of knowledge that’s already in the general public square.”
Musk accused the journalists of posting his real-time location, which is “principally assassination coordinates” for his family.
The billionaire appeared briefly in a Twitter Spaces audio chat hosted by journalists, which quickly become a contentious discussion about whether the suspended reporters had actually exposed Musk’s real-time location in violation of the policy.
“In case you dox, you get suspended. End of story,” Musk said repeatedly in response to questions. “Dox” is a term for publishing private details about someone, normally with malicious intent.
The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell, one in every of the journalists who had been suspended but was nonetheless in a position to join the audio chat, pushed back against the notion that he had exposed Musk or his family’s exact location by posting a link to ElonJet.
Soon after, BuzzFeed reporter Katie Notopoulos, who hosted the Spaces chat, tweeted that the audio session was cut off abruptly and the recording was not available.
In a tweet explaining what happened, Musk said “We’re fixing a Legacy bug. Must be working tomorrow.”