Twitter has suspended the accounts of several journalists covering news about Elon Musk. Among the banned above all American reporters: Drew Harwell of the Washington Post, Keith Olbermann of MSNBC, Ryan Mac of The New York Times, Donie O’Sullivan of CNN, Matt Binder of Mashable and Aaron Rupar. Something that The billionaire’s followers themselves don’t seem to have taken it well.
Elon Musk suspends the accounts of several journalists on Twitter
The decision to block the accounts of critical journalists was bound to stir controversy, especially coming from the billionaire who has announced he is buying Twitter to “defend free speech“. For this reason Musk entered Twitter Space to discuss his decision directly with users.
Musk explained that he banned journalists for have posted @ElonJet links, the account that posts the location of Musk’s private jet when it moves. Information publicly accessible from airport websites, but published in real time by the banned account yesterday.
The accounts of journalists who have published @ElonJet links on other social networks they would have “evaded the ban”a sufficient condition for the suspension of the reporters’ accounts, according to Musk.
Washington Post reporter Harwell pointed out that this decision is radically opposed to the one made regarding the publication of contents of the account of Hunter Biden, son of the current president USA.
Twitter responded by saying it has updated yesterday the regulation saying that publish “actual location information, including data published on Twitter or on third-party linksti” leads to the ban.
Musk’s position and the polls
Musk reiterated in a tweet that “they posted my exact, practically coordinated location for the assassination, in (obvious) violation of Twitter’s terms of service.” Although the information is publicly available and Musk himself said a few weeks ago that he would not have banned the @ElonJet account to defend free speech.
Musk then asked in a Twitter poll if he should “unsuspend accounts that have doxxed my real-time location.” He won the “Immediately” option, with 43% of the votes. Instead of saying, as usual, “Vox populi, vox dei”, Musk has redid the survey because there were “too many options”. At the moment, “Immediately” is winning with 60% of the votes.