The unprecedented suspensions caused a wave
of criticism from government officials, advocacy groups and journalism
organisations, with some saying it was jeopardising press freedom.
Musk justified the suspension of the
accounts on Thursday, accusing journalists of endangering his family by
“doxxing”, or disclosing nonpublic information, about his location.
He then created a poll on his Twitter
account, asking users how long the accounts should be suspended. It later
showed a majority of respondents wanted the accounts restored immediately.
“The people have spoken. Accounts who
doxxed my location will have their suspension lifted now,” Musk said in a tweet
on Saturday.
The suspended journalists included
reporters from The New York Times, CNN, and The Washington Post and they have
been reinstated.
Musk, who considers himself a “free speech
absolutist”, was criticised by officials from France, Germany, the United
Kingdom and the European Union earlier who condemned the suspensions.
French Minister of Industry Roland Lescure
tweeted on Friday that, following Musk’s suspension of journalists, he would
suspend his own activity on Twitter.
Melissa Fleming, head of communications for
the United Nations, tweeted she was “deeply disturbed” by the suspensions and
that “media freedom is not a toy”.
The German Foreign Office warned Twitter it
had a problem with moves that jeopardised press freedom.
The move affected Musk’s electric car maker
Tesla, slumping the company shares by 4.7 percent on Friday, posting their
worst weekly loss since March 2020.
Controversy over ElonJet
The suspension of the accounts started over
a disagreement regarding a Twitter account called ElonJet that tracked Musk’s
private plane using publicly available information.
In the past, Musk said he would not suspend
the account in the name of free speech. But on Wednesday, Twitter suspended it
and others that tracked private jets. Twitter also changed its privacy policy
shortly after to prohibit the sharing of “live location information”.
“Criticizing me all day long is totally
fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not,” Musk
wrote on Twitter, adding “the same doxxing rules apply to ‘journalists’ as to
everyone else”.
Musk later accused journalists of posting
“basically assassination coordinates” in violation of the platform’s policies,
but he provided no evidence for that claim.
The people have spoken.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 17, 2022
Accounts who doxxed my location will have their suspension lifted now. https://t.co/MFdXbEQFCe
CNN’s Donnie O’Sullivan, one of the
suspended journalists, said he had not shared the precise live location of
Musk’s jet.
Flight tracking data collected by the
United States Federal Aviation Administration is public information and
routinely shared online by private websites such as FlightAware and
Flightradar24.
Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Ella
Irwin, said the team manually reviewed “any and all accounts” that violated the
new privacy policy by posting direct links to the ElonJet account.
“I understand that the focus seems to be
mainly on journalist accounts, but we applied the policy equally to journalists
and non-journalist accounts today,” Irwin said in the email.
Since taking over the platform in a $44bn
deal in October, Musk has slashed Twitter’s workforce, overhauled its
moderation policies, and restored previously banned accounts, including that of
former US President Donald Trump.
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