December 15, 2022 Twitter suspensions
On December 15, 2022, Twitter suspended the accounts of nine journalists in an event one security researcher labeled the "Thursday Night Massacre". The journalists, who covered the social media company and its owner, Elon Musk, were all suspended without warning; Musk later said they had violated a policy on doxxing. The suspended journalists included reporters Keith Olbermann, Steven L. Herman, and , and journalists from The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and The Intercept.
Although the journalists were not initially provided specific reasons for the ban,
Musk wrote of the suspensions that "same doxxing rules apply to 'journalists' as to everyone else"
On December 16, after running two Twitter polls asking how long the accounts should remain suspended for, Musk tweeted: "The people have spoken. Accounts who doxxed my location will have their suspension lifted now." Upon acquiring Twitter, Musk fired several top executives, laid off half of the company's workforce, He has described himself as a "free speech absolutist". Specifically, he criticized the Internet bot account @ElonJet, which used publicly-available flight data to track trips taken by Musk's private plane. The account, which was started by a college student named Jack Sweeney, had more than 500,000 followers as of December 2022.
December 17
Some of the suspended journalists were reinstated on December 17.
Responses
Response from suspended journalists
The journalists were not initially told their accounts had been permanently suspended, and were not informed why they had been suspended or what specific rule they had violated. After Musk's explanation about the suspensions, Aaron Rupar said he had not posted anything that violated the policy about disclosing locations, adding: "Unless the policy is that you criticize Elon and you get banned." news site Mediaite also used the phrase in a headline describing the suspension and subsequent fallout, and it has since become a common term for representing the incident.
Although the journalists were not initially provided specific reasons for the ban,
Musk wrote of the suspensions that "same doxxing rules apply to 'journalists' as to everyone else"
On December 16, after running two Twitter polls asking how long the accounts should remain suspended for, Musk tweeted: "The people have spoken. Accounts who doxxed my location will have their suspension lifted now." Upon acquiring Twitter, Musk fired several top executives, laid off half of the company's workforce, He has described himself as a "free speech absolutist". Specifically, he criticized the Internet bot account @ElonJet, which used publicly-available flight data to track trips taken by Musk's private plane. The account, which was started by a college student named Jack Sweeney, had more than 500,000 followers as of December 2022.
December 17
Some of the suspended journalists were reinstated on December 17.
Responses
Response from suspended journalists
The journalists were not initially told their accounts had been permanently suspended, and were not informed why they had been suspended or what specific rule they had violated. After Musk's explanation about the suspensions, Aaron Rupar said he had not posted anything that violated the policy about disclosing locations, adding: "Unless the policy is that you criticize Elon and you get banned." news site Mediaite also used the phrase in a headline describing the suspension and subsequent fallout, and it has since become a common term for representing the incident.
Comments