All the journalists who are banned from Twitter have written a lot about the new owner, Elon Musk. Musk says he has done this because the journalists have accused him of “doxxing”, and thus put him in mortal danger. This term usually refers to publicly disclosing someone’s personal information, without the person’s consent. This may concern the person’s personal address, their workplace, or other personal information. Musk seems to use the term in a broader sense: – They published my exact real-time position, in a sense sniper coordinates. It is a clear and direct violation of Twitter’s guidelines, writes Elon Musk. – Criticizing me all day long is perfectly fine, but “doxxing” my real-time position and putting my family in danger is not fine. All the journalists had written articles about Musk’s banning of a Twitter account that followed the movements of his private plane, which happened on Thursday. Musk claims that sharing people’s real-time location put them in mortal danger, and has therefore locked a number of journalists out of the platform. Photo: ANDREW KELLY / Reuters The company then stated that they have changed their guidelines to limit access to share where people are. Musk says they will make a further change to the regulations, which allowed sharing positions after waiting for a while, when the person concerned “is not seen to be in serious danger of being killed”. He did not specify how long this would last. – Underpins the claim about freedom of expression Several of the newspapers in question have published public responses on their accounts. – The banning of Drew Harwell’s Twitter account directly supports Elon Musk’s claim that he wants to manage Twitter as a platform dedicated to freedom of expression, writes editor-in-chief Sally Buzbee in The Washington Post. – Harwell was banned from Twitter without notice, process or explanation, after he published an accurate report about Musk. Our journalist should get his account back immediately. Editor in The New York Times, Charlie Stadtlander, said late in the evening local time that they or their banned journalist Ryan Mac had received an explanation of what had happened. Earlier Musk tweet about the private jet account. He calls the exclusion “reprehensible and unfortunate”, and demands that the company come up with an explanation. CNN writes in its response that Twitter is increasingly “unstable” and “unpredictable”, and that this “should increasingly worry everyone who uses the platform”. – Musk seems to only stomp down accounts that he doesn’t like, writes Donie O’Sullivan, who is one of those who lost access to their accounts, to CNN. – I am thinking of the potentially frightening impact this can have on freelance journalists and independent journalists. The Twitter account of rival platform Mastodon has also had its account closed. Held votes on when to let in that Musk says the journalists he blames for doxxing will be banned for seven days. At the same time, he has started several reconciliations from his user. The alternative is “reopen the accounts that doxx my real-time position”: “now”, “tomorrow”, “in seven days” or “longer”. Here, the most popular answers were “no”, with 43 per cent, and “longer” with 38 – He then claimed that there were too many alternatives, and published a new one. This was limited to “now” and “in seven days”, where immediate reopening was after one hour. The Twitter account of platform rival Mastodon was also banned on Friday morning. The votes are similar to the one that gave former US President Donald Trump back his access to the platform. Musk has also received criticism from political parties. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who represents New York’s fourteenth district in the House of Representatives, writes: – You are a public figure. An extremely controversial and powerful one. I understand feeling insecure, but stooping as low as abusing power and arbitrarily shutting out journalists only increases the intensity around you. – Take a breath and give in to proto-fascism. Maybe you should try to put down your mobile phone. To this Musk replied: “You first lol”.
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