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NEW YORK, Dec. 16 (PTI) — Twitter has abruptly suspended the accounts of several prominent journalists covering the social media platform and Elon Musk, who bought the company in October.
Reporting by Ryan Mac of The New York Times, Donie O’Sullivan of CNN, Drew Harwell of The Washington Post, Matt Binder of Mashable, Micah Lee of The Intercept, Steve Herman of Voice of America and independent journalists Aaron Rupar and Keith via CNN Both Olbermann and Tony Webster had been suspended as of Thursday night, the news network reported.
Journalists, however, found a backdoor into the platform through the site’s audio feature, and hours later suspended their confrontation with Musk in a Twitter Space audio discussion with more than 30,000 listeners.
“You doxx, you’re suspended. End of story. That’s it,” Musk told one of the suspended reporters, explaining his latest policy to the group before leaving minutes after joining the discussion.
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Musk was referring to Twitter’s latest rule change regarding accounts tracking private jets, including one owned by Musk himself, which went into effect on Wednesday.
The Twitter account of Mastodon, which is billed as an alternative to Twitter, was also suspended Thursday evening.
Twitter accounts run by NBC News reporters were unable to post any links to Mastodon pages. However, Mastodon became a trending topic on Twitter.
According to NBC News, Musk said the suspension was due to the platform’s new rules banning private jet trackers, responding to a tweet from Mike Solana, vice president of venture capital firm Founders Fund, who noted that the suspended account posted Jet’s links are trackers on other sites.
“It’s perfectly fine to criticize me all day long, but not to doxx my real-time location and endanger my family,” he said in another tweet.
Doxxing is the practice of sharing someone’s home address or other personal information online.
Musk tweeted that the banned account on Thursday posted “my exact real-time location, basically the coordinates of the assassination, in (obvious) direct violation of Twitter’s terms of service.”
Musk later added that the suspension would last seven days.
In early November, shortly after taking control of Twitter, Musk tweeted that he would not ban accounts tracking his planes.
Rupar wrote on Substack that his account was permanently disabled, but he has no other information.
“I’ve heard nothing from Twitter at all,” he wrote, adding that he tweeted a link on Wednesday to a Facebook page tracking Musk’s jet.
Binder, a technology reporter for Mashable, said he was suspended after he tweeted a screenshot of another suspended reporter, CNN’s O’Sullivan, from the LAPD statement.
“I’ve been playing since 2008. I’ve never been hit so hard because I always play by the rules,” Binder said. “It’s not that hard to do when you know what the rules are.”
Binder said his account notified him that he was permanently suspended.
“That’s exactly what he criticized Twitter for,” Binder said of Musk.
Binder discovered the bug in Twitter’s suspension and joined other journalists for an audio discussion Thursday night on Twitter’s Spaces feature.
“I’m breaking the law like never before,” joked Binder.
Jack Sweeney, a 20-year-old Florida college student who created a Twitter account that tracks Musk’s jets, joined the discussion, which Musk also briefly joined.
The billionaire earlier ran a multiple-choice poll asking if or when he should reinstate the reporter’s account, but later deleted it and started a new one , as the majority of respondents voted to restore accounts immediately.
O’Sullivan said Thursday that all of the journalists who were suspended alongside him were people who reported on Musk.
“As we saw last night on the Jet Tracker, Musk seems to be just killing accounts he doesn’t like,” O’Sullivan said on CNN.
A spokesperson for the network said the suspension was “impulsive and unreasonable” – but not surprising.
“Twitter’s increasing instability and volatility should be of great concern to everyone who uses Twitter,” CNN said in a statement, adding that the network had asked Twitter to make “Explain” and will re-evaluate its relationship with the platform based on that response.
New York Times tech reporter Ryan Mac wrote on a new Twitter account that he was “received no warning” before his account was suspended, nor did he hear from the company that his account had been “permanently suspended.” any information on the cause of the .
A spokesman for The New York Times called the suspension suspicious and unfortunate, and said no explanation for the ban was provided to Mac or the paper.
Meanwhile, the European Union threatened to impose sanctions on Musk after the accounts of several journalists covering the company were abruptly suspended.
EU Commissioner Vera Jourova has warned that the EU’s Digital Services Act requires respect for media freedom.
“Elon Musk should be aware of this. There are red lines. Sanctions coming soon,” she tweeted.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, if individual bans were identified as retaliation for a journalist’s work, it would be a “serious violation of a journalist’s right to report the news without fear of reprisal”.
Several other groups condemned Twitter’s decision, with the head of the ACLU saying: “It’s impossible to compare Twitter’s desire for free speech to purging accounts of critical journalists.”
In a statement, the president of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) said it was “concerned” about the suspension, which “affects all journalists”.
Twitter, which recently dismantled most of its news division, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
But Twitter’s head of trust and safety told The Verge: “Without commenting on any specific account, I can confirm that we will suspend any account that violates our privacy policy and puts other users at risk.”
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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