Twitter bans prominent journalists and upstart rival Mastodon

Twitter has banned the accounts of several prominent journalists and its upstart rival Mastodon.

In a sudden purge which appears to make a mockery of Elon Musk‘s self-proclaimed free speech absolutism, the billionaire suggested that the reporters had been booted off for sharing personal information about him.

Among them are reporters from CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Intercept, and Mashable.

“Same doxxing rules apply to ‘journalists’ as to everyone else,” Musk said.

Musk’s reference to “doxxing rules”, which means the sharing of personal information, comes in light of Twitter suspending an account dedicated to tracking its owner’s jet.

He threatened to take legal action against the owner of @ElonJet, saying it was a risk to his “physical safety” after alleging that a “crazy stalker” attacked a car carrying his young son.

Musk suggested that the banned journalists had been punished for tweeting about the bot account, tweeting: “Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not.”

‘Potentially harmful’ Mastodon links blocked

Some of the reporters have since questioned their suspension in posts on Mastodon, a Twitter-like platform which emerged as a popular alternative following Musk’s $44bn takeover in October.

Mastodon itself has also had its account banned on Twitter, and tweets containing links to some servers and other content there are blocked for being “potentially harmful”.

One of the journalists banned from Twitter, Washington Post reporter Drew Harwell, wrote on Mastodon that he had recently written to Musk and posted links to “publicly available, legally acquired data”.

The newspaper’s executive editor, Sally Buzbee, said the ban undermined Musk’s free speech agenda.

‘Questionable and unfortunate’

Another of the banned reporters, Ryan Mac of The New York Times, had tweeted several times about the @ElonJet suspension and interviewed its owner, 20-year-old Jack Sweeney.

A spokesperson for the Times said the bans were “questionable and unfortunate” and called for all the reporters to have their accounts reinstated.

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Musk has said bans for doxxing will last for seven days, as he ignored the results of a poll he ran which saw most people vote for them to be reinstated “now”.

He has previously acted in line with the results of his Twitter polls, such as reinstating Donald Trump’s account.

“Power to the people,” were among his first words upon introducing Twitter’s revamped Blue subscription service, which grants customers the blue ticks previously reserved for verified accounts.

“Sorry, too many options. Will redo poll,” he said.

The new version, which asks if the reporters should be reinstated immediately or in seven days, has “now” in a near-20% lead with almost 1.5 million votes cast as of writing.

CNN has asked Twitter for an explanation over the bans, the outlet said.

In a rare statement following the mass lay-offs carried out by Musk, which gutted Twitter’s media relations team, a spokesperson told tech website The Verge that the bans related to the sharing of location data.

Twitter updated its policy on Wednesday to prohibit the sharing of “live location information”.

That’s despite Musk tweeting last month that his commitment to free speech extended “even to not banning the account following my plane, even though it is a direct personal safety risk”.

@ElonJet has now found a home on Mastodon, sharing in its most recent update that the plane landed in San Jose, California, on Thursday night after a three hour, 19-minute flight from Austin, Texas.

Musk tweeted on Thursday night: “If anyone posted real-time locations & addresses of NYT reporters, FBI would be investigating, there’d be hearings on Capitol Hill & Biden would give speeches about end of democracy!”

The owner of @ElonJet, who has also run similar accounts for the aircraft of other billionaires like Jeff Bezos, has argued the bot only tracks the plane rather than who is on it.

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