Twitter suspends journalists who have been covering Elon Musk and the company
Category: News & Politics
Via: perrie-halpern • 2 years ago • 136 commentsBy: Jason Abbruzzese, Kevin Collier and Phil Helsel
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Twitter on Thursday evening suddenly suspended several high-profile journalists who cover the platform and Elon Musk, one of the richest people in the world, who acquired the company just a few months ago.
Hours after the suspensions took hold, Musk faced off with one of the journalists he suspended in a Twitter Space audio discussion before an audience of more than 30,000 listeners. The suspended journalist, along with several others, found a backdoor way onto the platform through the website's audio function.
"You doxx, you get suspended. End of story. That's it," Musk said, explaining his latest policy to the group, before he left minutes after having joined the discussion.
Musk was referring to Twitter's latest rule change about accounts that track private jets, including one owned by Musk himself, which was put in place Wednesday.
The accounts of Ryan Mac of The New York Times, Donie O'Sullivan of CNN, Drew Harwell of The Washington Post, Matt Binder of Mashable, Micah Lee of The Intercept,Steve Herman of Voice of America and independent journalists Aaron Rupar, Keith Olbermann and Tony Websterhad all been suspended as of Thursday evening.
The Twitter account for Mastodon, a platform billed as a Twitter alternative, was also suspended early Thursday evening. Twitter accounts operated by NBC News journalists were unable to tweet any links to Mastodon pages. Mastodon was, however, trending on Twitter.
Musk said the suspensions stemmed from the platform's new rules banning private jet trackers, responding to a tweet from Mike Solana, a vice president of the venture capital firm Founders Fund, who noted that the suspended accounts had posted links to jet trackers on other websites.
"Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not," he said in another tweet.
Musk tweeted that the accounts banned Thursday posted "my exact real-time location, basically assassination coordinates, in (obvious) direct violation of Twitter terms of service." NBC News was unable to verify that allegation.
Musk later added that the suspensions would last seven days.
In early November, shortly after having taken control of Twitter, Musk tweeted that he would not ban the account that tracked his jet.
The latest on Elon Musk and Twitter
- Democrats criticize Musk for suspending journalists
- Elon Musk threatens legal action, suspends Twitter account that tracks his jet
- Elon Musk says he can stop child exploitation on Twitter. So far, he's axed jobs and pushed out watchdogs.
- Elon Musk's 'amnesty' pledge brings back QAnon, far-right Twitter accounts
- Twitter disbands its Trust and Safety Council
Rupar wrote on Substack that his account was permanently suspended but that he had no other information.
"I haven't heard anything from Twitter at all," he wrote.
He noted that he had tweeted a link Wednesday to a Facebook page that tracked Musk's jet.
Binder, a tech reporter at Mashable, said he was suspended after he tweeted a screenshot from another suspended reporter, CNN's O'Sullivan, of a Los Angeles Police Department statement.
"I've been on it since 2008. I never got so much as a slap on the wrist, because I always follow the rules," Binder said. "It's not hard to do when you know what the rules are."
Binder said his account notified him that he is permanently suspended.
"This is the very stuff that he's criticized the previous Twitter of doing," Binder said of Musk.
Binder did appear to find a loophole in Twitter's suspension, joining an audio discussion on Twitter's Spaces feature with other journalists Thursday night. Harwell later also joined.
"I'm breaking the law in ways that have never been broken before," Binder joked.
Jack Sweeney, a 20-year-old Florida college student who created the Twitter account that tracked Musk's jet, was also able to join the discussion despite his account's suspension.
Musk later joined the discussion, but briefly — getting out his talking points and then leaving abruptly. He had earlier put up a poll with a variety of options, asking whether or when he should reinstate the journalists' accounts. When a plurality of respondents voted to restore the accounts immediately, he deleted the poll and started a new one with fewer options.
O'Sullivan said Thursday that all those journalists who were suspended with him were people who cover Musk.
"As we saw with the jet tracker last night, Musk seems to be just stamping out accounts that he doesn't like," O'Sullivan said on CNN.
A spokesperson for the network said the suspensions were "impulsive and unjustified" — but not surprising.
"Twitter's increasing instability and volatility should be of incredible concern for everyone who uses Twitter," the network said in a statement. "We have asked Twitter for an explanation, and we will reevaluate our relationship based on that response."
Sally Buzbee, the executive editor of The Washington Post, said Harwell's suspension "directly undermines Elon Musk's claim that he intends to run Twitter as a platform dedicated to free speech."
Harwell was "banished from Twitter without warning, process or explanation, following the publication of his accurate reporting about Musk" and should be reinstated immediately, Buzbee said in a statement Thursday night.
A spokesperson for The New York Times, who called the suspensions questionable and unfortunate, said no explanation was provided to Mac or the newspaper about the ban.
Rep. Lori Trahan, D-Mass., tweeted that she had met on Thursday with Twitter representatives, who said the company would not take action against journalists who criticize the platform.
"Less than 12 hours later, multiple technology reporters have been suspended. What's the deal, @elonmusk?" Trahan added.
Musk has backtracked on his promise that he would run Twitter as a free speech absolutist, reinstating accounts associated with the QAnon movement and other far-right groups while banning others.
Internally, he has removed critics of his policies from the company.
The suspensions add to what has been a tumultuous couple of days for Twitter after it first suspended the account that tracked Musk's jet.
Musk appeared to threaten legal action against Sweeney, the creator of the @ElonJet account, after he claimed that a "stalker" confronted a car carrying his child in Los Angeles on Tuesday.
Musk provided no proof that Sweeney or his account was involved. He did not provide a time or location in the sprawling metropolitan area where he claimed the incident occurred.
Sweeney told NBC News on Wednesday that he hasn't received any notification of legal action and that the last time his bot tweeted anything was Monday, "which is not last night, so I don't get how that's connected."
The Los Angeles Police Department said Thursday that no police reports had been filed.
"LAPD's Threat Management Unit is aware of the situation and tweet by Elon Musk and is in contact with his representatives and security team. No crime reports have been filed yet," Officer Lizeth Lomeli, a police public information officer, said in a statement Thursday evening.
Other law enforcement departments also cover parts of the Los Angeles metropolitan area.
CORRECTION (Friday, Dec. 16, 12:30 a.m.): A previous version of this article misspelled the last name of a Los Angeles police public information officer. She is Lizeth Lomeli, not Loeni.
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gee, I guess musk meant the republican version of free speech for twitter...
The left whining about getting treated the exact same way as they treated the right is precious. Do i think it's right? no. But the lefts reaction is hysterical.
No, the left is not getting treated exactly the same as the right.
The right were banned because the Biden campaign, and the FBI operating on their behalf, for having the gall to post the truth about Hunter Biden's lap top or Democrat dogma.
These assholes were actually doxxing the location of Musk and more importantly his family. Given todays political climate no way in hell should that be tolerated. If any journalist on the right was doxxing someone on the left- those self same journalists would be howling at the moon for suspension and criminal charges filed.
In case leftists missed it- his son was tracked and threatened.
They were only banned 7 days- not permanently like they should have been.
The faux outrage from the left is completely hypocritical after supporting Twitter's shadow bans and permanent bans of conservatives. When they had violated a single Twitter rule.
Obviously!
it's always more expensive to be ignorant...
So a tracker on a private plane either flying, or perhaps landing at an airfield,
supposedly led a stalker to locate Little X in a car which someone attacked?
Sounds Delusional of Musk to connect those "dots".
Sweeney doesn't track cars.
seems as though rwnj's could use a tracker for all their wacko conspiracies.
I think you touched on it. All it would take is somebody stalking Musk to set him off.
gee, an attention whore attracting attention he doesn't want. maybe he should run for office...
Musk is trumpifying himself, and his fall will be just as ignominious.
Although cranks do thrive in the modern world information based society, the majority of people still shakes their heads and sarcastically laugh at them.
Elon Musk wasnt satisfied as being perceived as an incredibly successful innovator and entrepreneur, he also wanted to be worshiped by the masses.
Problem is he isnt capable of making himself worthy. Narcissism strikes again.
"Suddenly".... After they doxed him!
This skewed article does not deserve to be on our front page.
See, that's the problem, there used to be 2 sets of rules, 1 for conservatives and 1 for the special need's liberal journalist. They don't like following the rules. Aren't they all supposed to be in Canada anyways?
THAT'S RIGHT!
wrong...
NOT DOXED. ASSHOLES LIKE MUSK ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR OWN DOWNFALL OR WHATEVER YOU WANT TO CALL IT.
Quit shouting
fuck off
He claims they doxed him. He has no proof, does he? I mean that is a lot of publications that he said doxed him... I find it hard to believe. He just doesn't want to look like a hypocrite.
All the accounts did was show where planes take off and land. Hardly following him from where he goes from airports.
I also find it ironic that he himself tells people where he is. Hell all one has to do is go to the twitter office....
Their tweets are the proof, they linked or retweeted information from Mastodon that showed where he was, that is doxing in spite of what others claim.
I'd like to see said tweets. If it is common knowledge then it is not doxing.
Most of the journalists recently covered the suspension of @ElonJet , despite Musk avowing last month he would leave the account up as part of his “commitment to free speech.” The Twitter account, which tracked and shared the location of Musk’s private jet, was created by Jack Sweeney, a 20-year-old Florida college student. He relied on publicly available flight tracking information to build a Twitter bot that tweeted every time Musk’s Gulfstream was on the move.
The Tesla CEO has voiced his frustrations with the account in the past and has even offered to pay Sweeney $5,000 to stop posting his location. However, when Sweeney made a counteroffer of $50,000, negotiations seemingly ceased.
So, Vic, basically one guy was doing this based on public info and Musk was allowing it to be tweeted. How is this any of those publication's problem?
Do you mean Sweeney posting Musk's whereabouts being the public information?
I think that's an intrusion of privacy
If they link to Sweeney's post they are doing the same thing
Musk gets to define what is doxing on his site, He banned the twitter user who was posting real time location information on him, Bill Gates, Buffett and a couple others. The person posting that info moved his tracker to Mastodon, and the ignorant fools that Musk suspended linked to that banned information.
Think of it like this, If you banned me for content that I posted here that could potentially put you and your family at risk, and i continued to post the information on 4chan, would you tolerate another poster linking to that information on your site? especially if that poster had millions more followers than i ever had?
You have rules on your site that you enforce, If I don't follow those rules i get ticketed and/or suspended. They refused to follow the rules.
That's a good explanation. Thx.
Only yours are ...
that's easily remedied...
Not really. You do get credit for trying.
ezpz.
I have been covering Musk for years now, both good and bad. This article is no different from other articles I have posted.
Do you think that maybe a line giving his side of the story could have been included in let's say post 1?
That is our memberships duty. Otherwise, there would be nothing to discuss.
Well, as Douglas MacArthur once said "I tried to do my duty."
Otherwise, there would be nothing to discuss.
You are right. I assume I could have done better?
I really didn't need that line quoted in Post 4.5, did I?
I guess I could have been much nicer. I didn't mean it as an attack. If I came on too strong, I apologize.
It's all good!
I hope reporters all got the message:
You may not reveal real-time location information of a person (and their family) on social media without consequences.
I've noticed that's always a hard and fast rule in your hit pieces... /s
Reporting anything bad about Musk will get you banned.
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Irony.
Oh the irony?
Clear suppression of a free press, dumping journalists for right wing trolls to prove he is "fair and balanced". The law suit that should be filed even though it is a private company is that many people use twitter as a means of income, if they can prove they did not break any rules and all of these unknown arbitrary decisions are being made on a whim rather than notifying users prior to suspension, then they have a case of lost income. This definitely proves how each one suspended lost income due to losing social media access to thousands and thousands of followers who support their work. While it is well documented how Musk has cheated his own workers and treated them, he seems to feel he can do the same thing on social media without consequences. The suspended journalists lose income from lack of access to their consumers on social media so I hope they get the backing from their networks to approach it in that way if a suit is filed. If Musk is just tearing down what he thinks are "liberal, progressive" voices he is going to find a surprise. Right wing haters won't have anybody left to hate if all of these accounts are gone. If all he and all of his right wing cheerleaders want is another Fox echo chamber, all they have left is to shout at each other.
Doxing is not speech.
Repeating public information is not Doxing.
It was doxing!
Do you have a link to where it was published before it was posted on twitter?
The news accounts talked about in the article were banned after they reported on the kid posting publicly found information on Elon Musk's Jet. They also pointed out where Musk said he wouldn't ban the account and where Twitter has appended a statement to that very post. You can find it on multiple news sites, but here's one for you.
Doxing.
the action or process of searching for and publishing private or identifying information about a particular individual on the internet, typically with malicious intent:
So it was absolutely doxing, and against twitters new rules, I'm glad he is teaching the ignorant morons that the rules apply to them. They can go to Mastodon and have 10's of followers, or maybe truth social?
Me thinks people are now twisting what doxing means just to praise anything musk does. Just like they use to hero worship trump, their hero worship has moved on to musk. He can do no wrong in their eyes.
As long as they think they can piss off some libs, is all they care about.
Applying the definition is so thin you could read through it. Considering there are still 100s of similar accounts up that are doing the exact same thing to other celebrities. Many of them run by the same kid. I'm really, really, really hoping that Musk will try to sue the kid as he claims he's doing. The kid could counter sue and make bank.
Rules Musk wrote to specifically target this account. No big deal. Musk can run everyone off so that only right wing trolls and Nazis will use it.
What he's teaching people is that the First Amendment Crusader Musk touted himself to be is a joke.
On what grounds can the kid counter sue? Go!
Do keep u
up
Harassment and/or defamation come to mind right off the top.
Elon does not need to be identified any more that Joe Bidens address needs to be published.
Actually, it is not.
Posting private information is doxing.
This is all out there.
I know as a fact, that members have looked up public information on me. They are still here.
BUT......Posting private on any member is grounds for permanent suspension.
His current coordinates are already out there?
It's too bad that we didn't see all of this outrage when an entire news organization with a legitimate news story was banned from Twitter or when people had their accounts closed for voicing an opinion or as we are now learning, the FBI was actively engaged in violating the first amendment. Why don't those stories get promoted to our front page?
Has someone stopped you, have you not been posting several per day?
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how about that study documenting that twice as many republicans as democrats died from covid? "nobody is going to make me get the vaccine" >croak< LOL
Ok, tell me how posting about an actual study is taunting....
Bunch of bullshit.
Who knew that Repubs had so many people of color.
gee, how did I end up on the false equivalency article? oh wait, I didn't...
I give Twitter one year before it folds
Nope...advertisers value public platforms at call costs. Just look at Google and You Tube
Once the novelty of an uncensored forum wears off, they'll come flooding back
Or he'll get new advertisers like Preparation H, Mydol and the like,,,/S
The My Pillow Moron is a good advertiser!
50% off with the code "bankrupt"
And we are seeing the results of leftists tactics being used against leftists. Now they think it's wrong.
It may, or may not be wrong, but it is majorly hypocritical. Especially when twitter has to append a message saying an account was banned on an Elon Musk tweet saying he wouldn't ban that account.
Personally I hope it gets worse. Nothing would please me more than Musk running his companies into bankruptcy so something better can rise from the ashes. Tesla stock has tanked over the year and nosedived after Musk took over Twitter. It's so bad even Musk is selling a lot of it. Also Starlink raised it prices awhile back when thousands were still waiting for paid equipment and then they complained there was no one answering the customer service number.
I always thought Tesla was way over valued. Now I read that some of his lenders are going to face having their loans downgraded as they cannot be paid back for face value.
Yet some act like he's some fucking savior. Makes me want to vomit.
The same people who villified him when they thought him some Progressive leader during Tesla's early days.
Whatever
Never really knew much or cared about him before he became such a big asshole
You mean like many have said about the left for a very long time and it still continued? That kind of hypocritical?
Tesla dropped to $150.23 today.
Or course they don't think it's wrong, they would still embrace it fully.......as long as it happens to the "other" side.
That's exactly it.
It’s amazing how outraged the hypocrites are, gives me a smile to start the weekend.
Of course the right wing loves him. An egotistical jackass that now is an egomaniac. He is now having some God like complex...
I can see him going the way of Kanye...
And Charlie Sheen.
I wonder if the left would support the creation of a tracking app that gave 24hour real time location of Sasha and Malia?
DEFECTION!
He also has other accounts that track jets of people like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.
Funny this was never a problem before, now musk says jump and the right wing says, duh...ok.....
Comments from this thread were removed for a slap fight. Knock it off. Only warning.
No problem if they owned their own airplanes and the FAA made the information available to the public.
I simply cannot wrap my head around why you cannot wrap your head around that simple fact.
I MEANT DEFLECTION
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So musk is moderating like the old management team.
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Also seems the right wing is going on a flaggot campaign to try to get people they want suspended.
Antifa and BLM are well known for their bitter and sour fruits (riots and fire bombings)....and their violence against civilians and law enforcement.
The current rightwing has bought into narcissism like it's the latest, bestest thing ever. Toss in some chaos and it's the second coming into their pasty palms ... patsies being punked by pukes.
Wow! Lots of peeing going on there.
Comes with age, if you are not there yet you soon will be.
Only once a night.
Apparently Musk's sin is lack of subtlety and nuance. The preferred manner of doing this, established by the press, is to engage in circular reporting to coerce someone else into pulling the plug. Musk just pulls the plug himself which is intolerable.
Toss in hubris and both have a dance partner.
The gilded outrage used by the press to coerce institutions into pulling the plug on speech doesn't come from a position of humility. Musk isn't displaying any more hubris than does the New York Times.
Musk hasn't employed the subtlety of guilt shaming. Musk just pulled the plug on his own. The press wasn't in the loop. And the press takes great pride in its power to coerce.
I have noticed the satisfied smirks that litter Tucker's hour.
Musk is knee deep in "double think".
He tried to make himself the glorious guardian of free speech.
He said Twitter was going to be a bastion of free speech.
Butt, guess what? Elon Musk is transforming Twitter into a right-wing echo chamber.
He is kicking people off of Twitter because he can. It's his site and he can fuck it up if he wants to.
He already lost Twitter's main source of revenue (Apple) and I have a feeling that there will be an erosion of users.
I was kicked off of Twitter years ago. If I still had an account there, I would suggest that people leaving Twitter should check out NewsTalkers.
Marjorie Taylor Green, Musk and trump stranded on a sinking boat.
Musk says, I built this, it was voted on by right wing twitter.
Donald says, everyone knows I have the biggest boat around.
Green says, if I had a boat it would have guns on the side.
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And it wasn't a left-wing echo chamber? Sounds like you are upset that it's no longer a left-wing echo chamber.
Really?
Then why did I get banned for trolling The Donald?
You can't read your question and not figure it out yourself?
It's not WHAT you do. It's HOW you do it.
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Best comment of the day?
Suspending Olbermann seems particularly cruel. He's been fired from every place he's ever worked, and now a place he didn't.
Keith Olbermann is an ass and probably always has been, even going back to his ESPN days.
The left wing bubble is simply amazing.
(1) Documented reports that twitter executives lied to Congress, silenced legitimate news stories, colluded with the government to silence dissent , made up standards as they went along to silence Donald Trump and others are ignored by the media.
( 2) Musk bans a few left wing reporters a day and the MSM loses it mind and left wing governments threaten to fine and sanction Twitter.
Twitter/Musk has become the newest Three Ring Circus to the enjoyment of many.
In another head-snapping move Musk has re-instated the ''big bad journalists''...
Pass the popcorn.
He is a clown show.
... in an all clown circus.
I swear, some of these people would lay down and let musk spit on them, their adoration is so blind.
yeah, but he really knows how to own those libs, doesn't he? /s
No one wants to own a lib.
then stick with what you can afford.
It isn't a question of affordability--they are a dime a dozen.
The question is what the hell would I do with one?