Elon Musk has reinstated the Twitter accounts of several journalists that were suspended in a controversy over publishing public data about the billionaire’ s plane.
“The people have spoken. Accounts who doxxed my location will have their suspension lifted now,” he tweeted.
Twitter’s unprecedented suspension of at least five journalists over claims they revealed the real-time location of owner Musk drew swift backlash from government officials, advocacy groups and journalism organisations across the globe on Friday.
In a 24-hour poll later by Musk on Twitter on whether to restore the journalists’ accounts, 58.7 per cent of votes were in favour of restoring them immediately.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
The suspensions on Thursday evening drew criticism from government officials, advocacy groups and journalism organisations in several parts of the world, with some saying the microblogging platform was jeopardising press freedom.
Officials from France, Germany, Britain and the European Union condemned the suspensions.
The episode, which one well known security researcher labelled the “Thursday Night Massacre”, is being regarded by critics as fresh evidence of the billionaire, who considers himself a “free speech absolutist”, eliminating speech and users he personally dislikes.
Shares in Tesla, an electric car maker led by Musk, slumped 4.7 per cent on Friday and posted their worst weekly loss since March 2020, with investors increasingly concerned about his being distracted and about the slowing global economy.
Roland Lescure, the French minister of industry, 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 that the ministry had a problem with moves that jeopardised press freedom.
The suspensions stemmed from a disagreement over a Twitter account called ElonJet, which tracked Musk’s private plane using publicly available information.
On Wednesday, Twitter suspended the account and others that tracked private jets, despite Musk’s previous tweet saying he would not suspend ElonJet in the name of free speech.
Shortly after, Twitter changed its privacy policy to prohibit the sharing of “live location information.”
Then on Thursday evening, several journalists, including from the New York Times, CNN and the Washington Post, were suspended from Twitter with no notice.
In an email to Reuters overnight, 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.
The Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing said in a statement on Friday that Twitter’s actions “violate the spirit of the First Amendment and the principle that social media platforms will allow the unfiltered distribution of information that is already in the public square.”
Musk accused the journalists of posting his real-time location, which is “basically assassination coordinates” for his family.
