Twitter suspends multiple journalists that have been criticizing Elon musk.

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Twitter suspended accounts of several journalists on Thursday. Many of these writers had been criticizing Elon Musk over the previous days. Musk, however, suggested that the suspensions were due to his private plane being tracked.

Twitter suspended accounts belonging to prominent journalists that had been covering Elon Musk’s tenure on the social media site.

Donie O’Sullivan of CNN, Drew Harwell from The Washington Post, independent journalists Aaron Rupar and Keith Olbermann, as well as Tony Webster, The New York Times’ Ryan Mac and other writers covering the tech and twitter beat were among the affected accounts.

Rupar said to Insider that he wasn’t sure why his account had been suspended suddenly. He stated that a notice was posted at the top of his account on Thursday stating that he had been “permanently suspend” and placed in read-only mode. This meant that he could not tweet or DM.

He said, “That’s all the information I have from Twitter. No email, no information about which rule I may have broken.”

Insider reached out to Twitter representatives but Musk and a representative did not immediately respond.

This deluge of suspensions follows Twitter suspending the account of Jack Sweney (20 years old), a student who had created a tool that posted updates about Musk’s private jet’s location and threatened legal action. Soon after, the company changed its rules to prohibit posting someone’s “live address”.

Musk suggested that the reporter suspensions could also be related to the suspension of private jets on Thursday evening. Musk replied to a tweet by confirming that “about half” the suspended accounts had linked to the jet tracker.

Musk wrote that the same doxxing rules apply for ‘journalists” as for everyone else.

–Elon Musk (@elonmusk), December 16, 2022

Some of the journalists who were suspended had tweeted previously about @ElonJet’s presence on Mastodon. Mastodon is a social media platform which has been marketed as an alternative to Twitter. Twitter also suspended Mastodon’s account on Thursday.

Rupar said to Insider that he did not believe Rupar had tweeted or retweeted any information about the private jet scandal. Rupar also said that he didn’t believe he posted material that would violate copyright laws — another reason for his suspension. Rupar, however, did tweet criticalally about Musk on the night his account was suspended.

He said that he believed it was Elon’s post of criticism, which led to his suspension. “Maybe that’s the reason I didn’t receive any information from Twitter; they probably won’t come out with that.”

Micah Lee, a reporter covering tech at The Intercept said that he believed he was suspended after he posted about Twitter’s suspension of Mastodon. Lee stated that he has not received any notification from the company regarding its decision.

Ben Collins, NBC News reporter, compiled a list of at most eight accounts that had been suspended as of Thursday night. In the days preceding their suspension, nearly all of them were tweeting about Musk or writing critical pieces.

Musk is continuing to backtrack on his pledge to be a “free speech absolutist” with the suspensions being the latest in his ongoing backtracking. Musk replied to another Thursday night tweet that he did not believe the suspensions were prompted by criticism.

He wrote, “Criticizing my all day is fine. But doxxing me in real-time and endangering the family is not.”

Musk’s flight data is online and easy to track.

Business Insider has the original article.
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By: esnodgrass@insider.com (Erin Snodgrass)
Title: Twitter suspends multiple journalists who have been covering, criticizing Elon Musk
Sourced From: www.businessinsider.com/twitter-suspends-multiple-journalists-whod-been-covering-elon-musk-2022-12
Published Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2022 02:11:52 +0000