Accounts of journalists working on Elon Musk on Twitter have been suspended

TWITTER – Was Elon Musk’s promised defense of free speech an illusion? American Twitter teams decided to suspend the accounts of dozens of American journalists on Thursday, December 15, which caused concern and criticism from many editorial boards around the world on Friday.

American journalists whose Twitter accounts have been deactivated include media workers CNN (Dony O’Sullivan), the New York Times (Ryan Mack), Washington post (Drew Harwell) Mashable (Matt Binder) – other suspended accounts are those of well-known and influential independent journalists (like Aaron Rupar).

Most have written and commented extensively on Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter in late October and followed the events of the social network. In recent days, some journalists have tweeted information linked to an account that automatically publishes details of Elon Musk’s private jet travel.

“endanger”

Commenting on the suspension of journalists’ accounts from Thursday to Friday night, Elon Musk said noted : “It’s fine to put me down all day, but not to reveal my location in real time and put my family in danger.”, what did he say next whom “Contact Information” can be used “murder”. So is Twitter’s head of security, who works with Elon Musk at its San Francisco headquarters confirmed that social network “will suspend all accounts that violate our privacy policies and put other users at risk”.

The problem: dozens of journalists whose accounts have been suspended apparently did not post tweets that pointed to the billionaire’s location. In an article on the subject, Washington post exactly The latest tweets from the suspended journalists did not reveal Elon Musk’s exact coordinates. On the other hand, they highlighted on their Twitter accounts the controversial decisions made in recent days regarding Twitter’s @ElonJet account, dedicated to tracking Elon Musk’s private jet, which has now been suspended.

This @ElonJet account, created by a 20-year-old student and followed by nearly 500,000 people, used public data to automatically show when and where the Spacex and Tesla boss’s plane took off and landed. as you can see in our video below.

After @ElonJet’s suspension, Twitter clarified that its policies now prohibit most tweets that show someone’s real-time location.

These latest decisions by Elon Musk seem to have been made in haste after watching a car with a child inside in Los Angeles. This was announced by the new head of Twitter “crazy stalker” he hinted at the information that he claimed was stalking his family, then his private jet was taking part in a manhunt that might put him in danger.

Concerns about press freedom

However, it appears that the account suspension decisions go beyond this simple framework and involve more accounts that have tagged or posted links related to the @ElonJet case. In addition to the suspension of the journalists’ accounts, the activity of the account promoting the “Mastodon” social network, which competes with “Twitter”, was also suspended.

And users understood that was no longer possible Posting links to the Mastodon platform on Twitter: in particular, links to @ElonJet’s Mastodon account, which has resumed its activity on this social network.

It is enough to criticize Elon Musk’s desire to remove mentions of @ElonJet from his social network and therefore limit the dissemination of information about his travels.

“The impulsive and unjustified suspension of a number of reporters like CNN (reporter) Donie O’Sullivan is troubling but not surprising.”CNN responded in a statement. “Twitter’s increasing instability and volatility is particularly worrying for anyone using the platform. We have asked for an explanation from Twitter and will re-evaluate our relationship based on that response.”Added an American channel.

Roland Lescure, the minister responsible for industry in France, has announced that he will resign. “all activity on Twitter until further notice” after these final twists.

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