Twitter suspends accounts of several journalists who covered Elon Musk

Washington, Dec 15 (EFE).- Twitter on Thursday suspended the accounts of several journalists, including from The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN and Voice of America, who had recently covered its new owner, Elon Musk.

The microblogging site also took down their profiles and past tweets, various US media houses reported.

Some of the reporters, such as The New York Times’ technology reporter Ryan Mac, had recently written about the suspension of an account that used publicly available flight data to track the private jet of Elon Musk, who acquired Twitter at the end of October for $44 billion.

Musk had tweeted on Nov. 6 that he would not ban the @ElonJet account, saying his “commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk.”

However, in a turnaround on Wednesday, Twitter changed its rules and prohibited the sharing of live location of other people.

Although Twitter has not yet made any official comment on the suspension of journalists, the new head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, told The Verge on Thursday that the company “will suspend any accounts that violate our privacy policies and put other users at risk.”

“We don’t make exceptions to this policy for journalists or any other accounts,” she added.

In a tweet on Thursday night, Musk said, “criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not.”

Another of the journalists whose account was suspended, CNN reporter Donnie O’Sullivan, had posted a tweet about Musk’s claim that a “crazy stalker” had chased a car in which his son was traveling in Los Angeles, California.

On Monday, the company dissolved its Trust and Safety Council, an advisory group set up to address hate speech, amid a controversy over Musk’s policy of “amnesty” for accounts previously suspended for violating the rules of the social media, including that of former US President Donald Trump (2017-2021). EFE

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