Asfand Sandela
CALIFORNIA: Several journalists’ Twitter accounts, suspended for a day due to a dispute over publishing open information about the billionaire’s plane, have been reinstated by Elon Musk.
The unprecedented suspensions on Friday drew sharp criticism from government representatives, advocacy groups, and journalism organizations worldwide; some claimed that the microblogging platform was endangering press freedom. The reinstatements followed those suspensions.
Twitter accounts suspension
Musk later conducted a Twitter survey, revealing that most participants desired the accounts to be immediately restored. “The conversation is over. The suspension of the accounts that doxed my location has been lifted, “Musk stated on Saturday in a tweet.
A request for comment from Reuters did not receive a response from Twitter immediately. A check by Reuters revealed that the accounts that had been suspended, including those of journalists from the New York Times, Washington Post, and CNN, had been restored.
Denouncing Elon Musk’s Twitter action
EU representatives from France, Germany, Britain, and the United Kingdom earlier denounced the suspensions.
Critics view the incident, dubbed the “Thursday Night Massacre” by one prominent security researcher as new proof that Musk, who calls himself a “free speech absolutist,” silences users and speech he finds offensive.
Tesla, an electric vehicle manufacturer, run by Musk, saw its stock decline 4.7% on Friday and post its worst weekly loss since March 2020 as investors grew more concerned about his propensity for distraction and the slowing global economy.
The French minister of industry, Roland Lescure, tweeted on Friday that he would stop using Twitter after Elon Musk suspended journalists. The suspensions left UN communications chief Melissa Fleming “very upset,” She tweeted that “media freedom is not a toy.”
Twitter received a warning from the German Foreign Office that the ministry was concerned with actions that threatened press freedom.
Elonjet Twitter accounts dispute
The suspensions resulted from a dispute over the ElonJet Twitter account, which used information that was readily accessible to track Musk’s private plane. Despite Musk’s earlier tweet stating that he would not suspend ElonJet in the name of free speech, Twitter suspended the account on Wednesday along with others that tracked private aircraft within a short period of time, Twitter modified its privacy policies to forbid the dissemination of “live location information.”
Then, on Thursday night, several journalists’ Twitter accounts were suspended, including those from the New York Times, CNN, and the Washington Post.
The team allegedly manually checked “any and all accounts” that tweeted direct links to the ElonJet account in violation of the new privacy rules, according to Ella Irwin, head of trust and safety at Twitter, who stated as much in an email to Reuters overnight.
Journalistic Twitter accounts
We applied the policy equally to both journalistic and non-journalistic accounts today, Irwin wrote in the email. “I understand that the focus seems to be primarily on journalistic accounts, but we applied the policy equally to journalists’ and non-journalistic accounts today.”
Twitter’s measures “violate the spirit of the First Amendment and the notion that social media platforms will enable the unfettered sharing of material that is already in the public arena,” the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing claimed in a statement on Friday.
Assassination coordinates for his family, according to Musk, were posted by the journalists in real-time, The billionaire briefly participated in a journalist-hosted Twitter Spaces audio chat, which quickly devolved into a heated debate over whether the journalists had actually disclosed Musk’s real-time location in violation of the policy.
“Doxing results in suspension. Story over, “In response to inquiries, Musk stated several times. Private information about someone is frequently published with malicious intent and is referred to as “doxing.”
Drew Harwell of The Washington Post, one of the journalists who had been suspended but was still able to take part in the audio discussion, rejected the notion that by posting a link to ElonJet, he had disclosed Musk or his family’s exact location. The Spaces chat’s host, BuzzFeed reporter Katie Notopoulos, tweeted shortly after that the audio session had ended abruptly and that no recording was available.
Musk clarified the incident in a tweet “A Legacy bug is being fixed. Tomorrow should be a workday.”
