Musk reinstates arrested journalists after Twitter poll
Several prominent journalists who were suspended from Twitter Thursday night were reinstated early Saturday.
“The people have spoken,” Elon Musk tweeted.
Twitter users voted in a poll Musk posted to reinstate accounts that were cut without notice. The new owner of the social media platform recently used Twitter polls to make several high-profile decisions including reinstatement of former President Donald Trump’s account.
Narratives by Ryan Mack of The New York Times, Donnie O’Sullivan of CNN, Drew Harwell of The Washington Post, Matt Binder of Mashable, Micah Lee of The Intercept, Steve Herrmann of VOA, and freelance journalists Aaron Robar, Keith Olbermann and Tony Webster were featured. They turn off Thursday night.
“Matt Bender is back,” the Mashable journalist wrote on Twitter early Saturday.
Olbermann’s account appeared to remain suspended on Saturday morning.
musk He said The suspension will last seven days, but early Saturday it said that “accounts that have removed my site will now be suspended.”
He accused the journalists of sharing private information about his whereabouts, which he described as “essentially assassination coordinates”. NBC News has not been able to verify this claim.
“You dox, you get suspended. End of story.” Musk said Thursday night in an audio discussion in Twitter Space, explaining his latest policy to more than 30,000 listeners.
He was referring to the latest change to Twitter’s rule on accounts tracking private jets, including one owned by Musk, which was introduced on Wednesday.
Several of the arrested journalists have been reporting on the new policy and Musk’s rationale for enforcing it, which included his allegations about a stalking incident he said affected his family Tuesday night in Los Angeles.
He wrote on Twitter on Wednesday that a car with one of his children in it was being followed and stopped from moving by a driver who Musk said was wearing a hood with his child in it.
The Los Angeles Police Department said Thursday that no police report has been filed. Other law enforcement departments also cover parts of the Los Angeles metropolitan area.
Musk said, “Any account that polls real-time location information of anyone will be suspended, as it is a violation of physical integrity. This includes posting links to sites that contain real-time location information.”
“Publishing the locations someone has traveled to based on a slight delay isn’t a safety issue, so that’s okay,” Musk added.
The accounts that were suspended, though, did not tweet about the real-time location of the car Musk said his son was in. One of the banned accounts, “elonjet,” previously tweeted flight data showing the location of Musk’s private jet. Some of the banned journalists tweeted links to the account and other profiles run by creator Jack Sweeney, whose personal Twitter account has also been suspended.
Flight data includes where the plane lands, but it doesn’t track passengers outside the plane itself, so it can’t be used to track the real-time location of Musk or his children if they’re not on or near the plane.
The account of Mastodon, a platform that has emerged as one of Twitter’s main competitors, was also suspended Thursday, and links to Mastodon and other independent and decentralized networks have been banned as “unsafe” links that can no longer be tweeted on.
The decision to suspend Thursday was sharply criticized by free speech experts, and Musk’s fans and some conservative influencers joined in condemning the move.
Musk has vowed to run Twitter as a free speech absolutist, and since taking control he has restored accounts associated with the QAnon movement and other far-right groups, but banned others.
He also removed critics of his policies from the company.
Associated PressAnd the David Ingram And the Jason Abruzzese Contributed.
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