Twitter on Thursday suspended the accounts of several prominent journalists citing 'doxxing.' Elon Musk, the new owner of the social media platform said that rules banning publishing of personal information applied to all.
Responding to a Tweet on the account suspensions, Musk tweeted, “Same doxxing rules apply to 'journalists' as to everyone else.” He added, “Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not.”
Musk tweeted, “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 travelled to on a slightly delayed basis isn’t a safety problem, so is ok.”
Musk also conducted a Twitter poll on when to reinstate the suspended accounts. Twitter on Wednesday suspended the account @elonjet which was tracking Elon Musk's private jet on real time.
Among the journalist accounts suspended on Thursday was that of Washington Post reporter Drew Harwell (@drewharwell), who wrote on social media platform Mastodon that he had recently written about Musk and posted links to "publicly available, legally acquired data, the Reuters reported.
Reuters reported the accounts of Times reporter Ryan Mac (@rmac18), CNN reporter Donie O'Sullivan (@donie), and Mashable reporter Matt Binder @MattBinder were also suspended, as was that of independent journalist Aaron Rupar (@atrupar), who covers the US
policy and politics.
Germany's foreign office has raised objections to the suspension of accounts and called the action unacceptable. A senior government official also threatened to leave Twitter. "Press freedom cannot be switched on and off on a whim," the ministry tweeted.