Twitter is banning critical journalists from the platform who are busy covering the app’s Chief Elon Musk. It appears to be a no-nonsense policy as the decision to target leading reporters through account suspension has already begun at a fast pace.
Common names include the likes of New York Times’s Ryan Mac, Mashable’s Aaron Rupar, Drew Harwell from the Washington Post, and Micha Lee from The Intercept. But that’s just the start as the list continues to increase as we speak.
We saw the billionaire Twitter CEO log into his account yesterday to try and provide a justification for the actions and it’s definitely surprising. And that’s especially shocking coming from a man who wishes to promote freedom of speech through his platform.
He also ran a new poll that asked users of the app if they felt such reporters’ accounts should be unbanned and when. And to his dismay, things didn’t quite go his way as the responses weren’t in his favor.
All the journalists who received the ban from the app were those who spoke about Musk recently in regard to their attempts of deciphering where his private jet was currently located. While such accounts can’t really post their thoughts on the app, they can still go about joining a live audio chat through Twitter Spaces. And that’s where Musk came face to face with some banned journalists, justifying his actions.
During that chat, Musk accused the individuals of embarking on a task called ban evasion. He outlined how his ElonJet account was removed from the app but it was seen on Facebook and Mastodon. And when such reporters put up links to such accounts, they were going against the ban he set up. This was not the right behavior, he continued.
As one can imagine, bullets were fired at the Twitter chief by the reporters. They argued and asked what difference his ban was from publishing a story of Hunter Biden’s personal information inside a laptop. Remember, that post is currently banned.
Musk didn’t go into too many nitty-gritty details. He did try to keep it short and sweet by mentioning that the rules are very simple regarding content moderation. If you end up doxing, you get banned and it is what it is. He then opted to leave the chat at that.
More emphasis was later put forward by the company’s head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin. She reiterated how it was just a crime to share details about live locations on the app as it went against their policy. Even links related to URLs from third parties were wrong as in this case where information about travel routes had been provided.
Irwin also warned how the policies were the same for all accounts. There are no specific exemptions granted to anyone, be it a journalist, celebrity, public figure, and more.
Musk was furious when he came to know about the matter. He outlined the move as coordinates that highlighted a possible assassination attempt and it was just wrong on so many levels. He didn’t like the posting of real-time locations as it directly violated the app’s terms of service.
Read next: Twitter Predicted to Lose 32.7 Million Users in Two Years
Common names include the likes of New York Times’s Ryan Mac, Mashable’s Aaron Rupar, Drew Harwell from the Washington Post, and Micha Lee from The Intercept. But that’s just the start as the list continues to increase as we speak.
Same doxxing rules apply to “journalists” as to everyone else
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 16, 2022
We saw the billionaire Twitter CEO log into his account yesterday to try and provide a justification for the actions and it’s definitely surprising. And that’s especially shocking coming from a man who wishes to promote freedom of speech through his platform.
The NYTimes' @rmac18 has been suspended from Twitter. He's been on the Elon Musk beat.
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) December 16, 2022
He also ran a new poll that asked users of the app if they felt such reporters’ accounts should be unbanned and when. And to his dismay, things didn’t quite go his way as the responses weren’t in his favor.
All the journalists who received the ban from the app were those who spoke about Musk recently in regard to their attempts of deciphering where his private jet was currently located. While such accounts can’t really post their thoughts on the app, they can still go about joining a live audio chat through Twitter Spaces. And that’s where Musk came face to face with some banned journalists, justifying his actions.
During that chat, Musk accused the individuals of embarking on a task called ban evasion. He outlined how his ElonJet account was removed from the app but it was seen on Facebook and Mastodon. And when such reporters put up links to such accounts, they were going against the ban he set up. This was not the right behavior, he continued.
As one can imagine, bullets were fired at the Twitter chief by the reporters. They argued and asked what difference his ban was from publishing a story of Hunter Biden’s personal information inside a laptop. Remember, that post is currently banned.
Musk didn’t go into too many nitty-gritty details. He did try to keep it short and sweet by mentioning that the rules are very simple regarding content moderation. If you end up doxing, you get banned and it is what it is. He then opted to leave the chat at that.
More emphasis was later put forward by the company’s head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin. She reiterated how it was just a crime to share details about live locations on the app as it went against their policy. Even links related to URLs from third parties were wrong as in this case where information about travel routes had been provided.
Irwin also warned how the policies were the same for all accounts. There are no specific exemptions granted to anyone, be it a journalist, celebrity, public figure, and more.
Musk was furious when he came to know about the matter. He outlined the move as coordinates that highlighted a possible assassination attempt and it was just wrong on so many levels. He didn’t like the posting of real-time locations as it directly violated the app’s terms of service.
Read next: Twitter Predicted to Lose 32.7 Million Users in Two Years
