Twitter on Friday, December 16, suspended the accounts of several journalists who covered the social network and its new owner Elon Musk. Some of the reporters tweeted about Twitter’s decision to suspend the account that automatically reported Elon Musk’s private jet travel.
An “impulsive and unjustified” suspension
Among the suspended journalists are employees of media such as CNN, the New York Times or the Washington Post, and other independent journalists.
“Twitter’s increasing instability and volatility is of particular concern to anyone who uses the platform. We have asked Twitter for an explanation and will reassess our relationship based on that response,” CNN added.
Lawsuit against student behind @Elonjet
Elon Musk tweeted on Thursday (December 15) that a car in Los Angeles with his son had been tracked by “a crazy stalker,” appearing to point to the tracking of his private jet as the reason. He announced in this tweet that he was going to sue Jack Sweeney, the person behind the now-suspended @ElonJet account.
Created by a student and followed by some 500,000 people, @ElonJet used public data to automatically tell when and where the Spacex and Tesla boss’s device took off and landed.
Twitter later reported that its policy now banned most tweets that showed someone’s location in real time.
mixed messages
“Posting someone’s location in real time violates the doxing rules, but posting it offline is allowed,” Elon Musk tweeted on Wednesday. The term “doxing” means publicly disclosing, most often on the Internet, personal information relating to an individual, without that individual’s consent.
By the time he reached the Twitter header, Elon Musk had vowed not to touch the @ElonJet account. Since he took over the platform for $44 billion, the billionaire has sent mixed messages about what’s allowed and what’s not.
A fervent defender of great freedom of expression – as long as the statements respect the law – he restored accounts previously banned by the social network, including that of Donald Trump. But he also suspended Kanye West’s after posting several messages deemed anti-Semitic and rejected the return of far-right cabal Alex Jones to the platform.
Source: BFM TV
