Twitter Inc. has suspended the accounts of rival new service Mastodon and several prominent journalists covering the social network’s billionaire owner Elon Musk.
On Thursday night, reporters from publications including the Washington Post, the New York Times, Mashable and CNN were listed as blocked with their tweets no longer viewable, and the company’s standard notice read that it “suspends accounts that violate the rules.” from Twitter”.
“They did not give me any warning. I have no email or communication from the company as to the reason for the suspension,” New York Times reporter Ryan Mac tweeted from a new account. He posted a screenshot of the app that says it has been permanently suspended. “I report on Twitter, Elon Musk and his companies. And I’ll continue doing it”.
Sports and political commentator Keith Olbermann was also affected. Musk said that Olbermann will be subject to a 7-day suspension for doxing. In another tweet, he alleged that the suspended journalists had posted his exact location in real time, describing the information as “basically murder coordinates.”
The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell, along with other banned reporters, was able to participate in a Twitter Spaces audio session while suspended, exposing a loophole in the Twitter app.
Twitter earlier cut off the feed from competing social network Mastodon, which had posted a link on its Twitter page to an account on its own service that uses publicly available flight data to track Musk’s private plane. On Wednesday, Twitter had suspended several profiles that tracked the locations of private planes, including Musk’s.
Musk, who has called himself a free speech absolutist and took over Twitter with the stated goal of removing censorship, tweeted that “doxxing rules apply to ‘journalists’ just like everyone else.”
“This is management as a dark art,” Paul Barrett, deputy director of New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, said in an email. “The one thing we can all thank Musk for is that he is proving, day by day, just how dangerous (and self-destructive) it is for so much corporate power to be concentrated in the hands of a few Silicon Valley moguls.”
CNN, whose reporter was caught up in the series of suspensions, responded by saying that “the impulsive and unwarranted suspension of several reporters, including CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, is concerning but not surprising. The increasing instability and volatility of Twitter should be an incredible concern for everyone who uses the platform. We have asked Twitter for an explanation and will re-evaluate our relationship based on that response.”
An email to Twitter seeking comment on the journalists’ suspensions was not immediately returned.
