‘Doxxed’, Angry Free Speech Champ Musk Bans Several Journalists

Elon Musk, the self-proclaimed free speech absolutist, permanently suspended the accounts of several prominent journalists, including CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, The New York Times’ (NYT) Ryan Mac and The Washington Post’s (Post) Drew Harwell, on Thursday without explanation for ‘doxxing’ and aggressively covering him since his Twitter acquisition.

The accounts of Mashable’s Matt Binder, The Intercept’s Micah Lee, and independent journalists Aaron Rupar, Keith Olbermann and Tony Webster also appeared to have been suspended.

Doxxing usually refers to sharing someone’s home address or other personal information online. Though neither Musk nor Twitter responded to a CNN request for comment and didn’t explain precisely the reason for the ban, his new doxxing policy was the apparent cause.

According to the New York Post (NYP), some of the suspended accounts belonged to reporters, including O’Sullivan, Mac and Harwell, who had recently covered or tweeted about the dispute between Musk and an account operated by Florida college freshman Jack Sweeney that tracked his private jet flights.

Sweeney, whose account @ElonJet posted real-time updates on the whereabouts of the Twitter CEO’s private jet, had rejected Musk’s offer of $5,000 to shut down the handle, which had hundreds of thousands of followers, AFP reported.

Despite announcing publicly after taking over Twitter that he wouldn’t touch @ElonJet as part of his free speech policy, Musk suspended the account on Wednesday.

“Well it appears @ElonJet is suspended,” Sweeney tweeted from his personal account @JxckSweeney.

@ElonJet was visible later in the day for a while. “Yes I am back!” posted @ElonJet adding a link to versions of the flight tracking account at other social networks such as Instagram, Facebook and Mastodon. However, soon @ElonJet and @JxckSweeney were suspended.

Twitter said that only tweets sharing a person’s location that are “not same-day” are allowed under the first-time restrictions on location sharing. The microblogging platform banned all accounts that track people’s live locations and Musk also blocked any account linking to such information. 

On Wednesday, Musk termed sharing of real-time location as a “physical safety violation”. “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 traveled (sic) to on a slightly delayed basis isn’t a safety problem, so is ok.”

Responding to a tweet on the banned accounts of journalists, Musk tweeted on Friday: “Same doxxing rules apply to ‘journalists’ as to everyone else.

Replying to the same tweet, Musk added: “They posted my exact real-time location, basically assassination coordinates, in (obvious) direct violation of Twitter terms of service.”

In reply to another tweet, the Tesla CEO said: “Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not.”

On Thursday, Musk tweeted that there would be a seven-day suspension for doxing and asked Twitter users to vote on when to reinstate such accounts. The polling showed 43% voting for reinstating the accounts.

Moments later, Musk tweeted that he had offered “too many options” and will “redo poll” adding that the “FBI would be investigating” and “[Joe] Biden would give speeches about end of democracy” if anyone “posted real-time locations of NYT reporters”.

The suspended journalists, who had covered the banning of @ElonJet, slammed Musk for claiming to be a champion of free speech while banning journalists at the same time.

“Free speech is when the world’s second-richest man threatens legal action against a 20-year-old college student [Sweeney] for sharing publicly available data he doesn’t like,” Harwell tweeted before being banned.

O’Sullivan, who had interviewed Sweeney and his grandmother regarding the issue, told CCN that the mass ban could have a “chilling impact on freelance journalists, independent journalists around the world, particularly those who cover Elon Musk’s other companies, like Tesla and SpaceX”.

“Elon says he is a free speech champion and he is banning journalists for exercising free speech. I think that calls into question his commitment,” Harwell told CNN.

A CNN spokesperson said that the company has asked Twitter for an explanation and would “re-evaluate our relationship based on that response”.

“The impulsive and unjustified suspension of a number of reporters, including CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, is concerning but not surprising. Twitter’s increasing instability and volatility should be of incredible concern for everyone who uses Twitter,” the spokesperson said.

A NYT spokesperson termed the ban “questionable and unfortunate”. “Neither The Times nor Ryan have received any explanation about why this occurred. We hope that all of the journalists’ accounts are reinstated and that Twitter provides a satisfying explanation for this action.”

CNN released a statement Thursday night that blasted the “impulsive and unjustified” suspension of O’Sullivan and others.

“Twitter’s increasing instability and volatility should be of incredible concern for everyone who used Twitter,” the statement read. “We have asked Twitter for an explanation, and we will reevaluate our relationship based on that response.”

The Post’s executive editor Sally Buzbee said that Harwell’s ban undermined Musk’s free speech pledge. “Harwell was banished from Twitter without warning, process or explanation following the publication of his accurate reporting about Musk,” Buzbee said in a statement. “Our journalist should be reinstated immediately.”