After Twitter suspended an account that had been providing publicly available flight data for Elon Musk’s private jet, the social media platform’s recent owner and chief executive suggested that the page put him and his family at risk.
In a three-tweet thread, Musk said any account providing “real-time” location information of any person can be suspended because “it’s a physical safety violation.” The billionaire also alleged that on Tuesday night, a “crazy stalker” followed and climbed onto the hood of a automotive carrying Musk’s son.
Musk promised to take legal motion against the faculty student who ran the flight-tracking account, which went by @ElonJet, and any “organizations who supported harm to my family.”
On Thursday, the Los Angeles Police Department said no police report had been filed in regards to the incident that drew Musk’s concern.
“LAPD’s Threat Management Unit is aware of the situation and Tweet by Elon Musk and is in touch together with his representatives and security team,” the department said in a press release. “No crime reports have been filed yet.”
The police statement comes as Twitter and Musk face increasing scrutiny over a wave of suspensions, including several journalists who cover Musk.
Amongst those whose accounts were suspended Thursday night are Ryan Mac from the Latest York Times, Donie O’Sullivan from CNN, Matt Binder from Mashable, Drew Harwell from the Washington Post, political pundit Keith Olbermann and Steve Herman from the government-funded Voice of America.
Harwell’s last post before being suspended was about Twitter removing the account of one in all its competitors, Mastodon, for posting a link to its own version of the @ElonJet account that tracked Musk’s plane, in line with a tweet from NBC News reporter Ben Collins.
O’Sullivan and Binder’s accounts were suspended after they shared the LAPD’s statement.
Binder said Thursday that he was suspended immediately after sharing a screenshot from O’Sullivan of the statement.
“I didn’t share any location data, as per Twitter’s recent terms. Nor did I share any links to ElonJet or other location tracking accounts,” Binder said. “I even have been highly critical of Musk but never broke any of Twitter’s listed policies.”
Musk, a self-described free speech absolutist, vowed to make sweeping changes to the social media platform once he finalized his control over the corporate, though last month, he tweeted that his “commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, regardless that that could be a direct personal safety risk.”
On Wednesday, Twitter announced a policy update that prohibited the sharing of “live location information, including information shared on Twitter directly or links to Third-party URL(s) of travel routes.”
“We don’t make exceptions to this policy for journalists or some other accounts,” Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin told the Verge via email.
Thursday night, Musk posted several tweets responding to the journalists’ account suspensions.
“Criticizing me all day long is completely high quality, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is just not,” one tweet read.
“They posted my exact real-time location, principally assassination coordinates, in (obvious) direct violation of Twitter terms of service,” said one other.
Musk also briefly joined a Twitter Spaces audio chat room by which several of the banned journalists were discussing the news.
“You show the link to real-time information, ban evasion,” Musk said. “You dox, you get suspended, end of story, that’s it.”
Banned Washington Post tech reporter Harwell, who was also within the chat room, responded: “That is reporting … there’s reporting value in public data.”
Times staff author Jaimie Ding contributed to this report.
