Free speech advocate Elon Musk suspends Twitter accounts of roughly a dozen journalists

The Elon Musk-owned social media platform suspended accounts of prominent U.S-based journalists like Ryan Mac of The New York Times; Drew Harwell of The Washington Post; Aaron Rupar, an independent journalist; Donie O’Sullivan of CNN; Matt Binder of Mashable; Tony Webster, an independent journalist; Micah Lee of The Intercept; and the political journalist Keith Olbermann.

It was not immediately clear what the suspensions had in common; each user’s Twitter page included a message that said it suspended the account as it “violated the Twitter rules.”

The New York Times was the first to report this.

Musk on Friday morning confirmed the move when a user posted a screenshot of journalist's accounts getting banned and captioned it as, ‘Meltdown.’

In response to this Musk tweeted, “Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not,” indicating that the journalists were tracking or promoting services that were tracking his real-time location.

Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 16, 2022

Same doxxing rules apply to “journalists” as to everyone else

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 16, 2022

It was not immediately clear for how long have the accounts been suspended. Later, in a tweet Musk clarified that suspension due to doxxing would be for seven days. 

7 day suspension for doxxing. Some time away from Twitter is good for the soul …

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 16, 2022

However, he also conducted a poll asking his followers about the time for which the accounts should remain suspended while taking a dig at the Biden administration.

If anyone posted real-time locations & addresses of NYT reporters, FBI would be investigating, there’d be hearings on Capitol Hill & Biden would give speeches about end of democracy!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 16, 2022

Musk was also quick to clarify that soon a feature will be added to Twitter that shall specify the time period for which any account has been suspended.

Yeah, we will add that feature. Current system isn’t clear.

A time delay on reporting location that doesn’t put people at serious risk of being killed is fine.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 16, 2022

This move comes a day after Twitter suspended over 25 accounts that tracked the planes of government agencies, billionaires, and high-profile individuals, including Musk.

Many of the accounts were operated by Jack Sweeney, a 20-year-old college student and flight-tracking enthusiast who had used Twitter to post updates about the location of Musk’s private plane using publicly available information.

Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation. This includes posting links to sites with real-time location info.

Posting locations someone traveled to on a slightly delayed basis isn’t a safety problem, so is ok.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 15, 2022

Musk has often portrayed himself as a free speech activist and criticized Twitter’s former management for banning and suspension of accounts.