After global protests, Elon Musk allowed journalists banned from Twitter to return
Elon Musk has allowed some journalistic accounts to return to Twitter after protests from spokespeople for the European Union and the United Nations. He assures that this is a decision based on the results of a poll on Twitter.
As usual he will say, “ the people spoke “. Elon Musk on December 17, 2022 agreed to restore the Twitter accounts of dozens of journalists who saw their official accounts suspended the day before. The billionaire says that these accounts ” Touch your location in real time “.
Doxing is a practice that aims to publish all the information that can identify a person online, as well as their physical location, such as their address or the address of their relatives. It is used by malicious people who want to trick the virtual crowd into going to their target’s real home.
Elon Musk, the new head of Twitter since late October, uses the term doxing badly here.
Elon Musk, private jets and journalists: a timeline of hell week
The billionaire is actually trying to get out of the deadlock he got himself into. The chronological summary is as clear as it is transparent in its malice:
- For yearsElon Musk is trying to delete Twitter accounts that aggregate public data from private jet trips — initiatives primarily to educate billionaires about their carbon footprints.
- In October 2022Elon Musk becomes the head of Twitter.
- December 14, 2022, the ElonJet account that tracked the movements of Musk’s plane was suspended. The reason: Twitter now considers this a practice of doxing — even though the data is public.
- December 15, 2022Twitter is updating its rules and deciding that sharing any real-time location of a person on its platform is now prohibited.
- December 16, 2022, Twitter bans half a dozen journalists who have been following Musk’s career and Twitter takeover very closely. These journalists (CNN, New York Times or Washington Post) clearly did not share Musk’s location in real time. Some have written articles about ElonJet account suspension. Others attended the Aysal Twitter Space meeting with the billionaire, who left the interview after three questions. One of them, Linette Lopez, is known to have been researching Tesla and Musk for years. He was suspended without ever tweeting Musk’s whereabouts, but after sending reminder tweets Musk has always targeted people by name on his account.
A few hours later, the United Nations condemned the decision, which could create a “trial”. previous dangerous with the speaker’s voice. A number of personalities in the administration of the European Union also ” worried “about this” arbitrary termination “.
Věra Jourova, vice-president of the commission dedicated to transparency and values, specifically noted that in Europe, Twitter must respect the new regulation called DSA, which guarantees press freedom.
Mastodon links may also be reposted
Some accounts of American journalists were restored on December 17, 2022, after being suspended for about 24 hours. This From an account by Linette Lopez not yet raised.
The ElonJet account was also not recovered.
Twitter wrote in one of its official accounts: We’ve identified a few rules where a suspension feels like an overreaction to a violation of Twitter’s rules. We have begun to reinstate suspended accounts (…) and will expand this decision to additional accounts weekly over the next 30 days..”
However, another decision was made without official notice: allowing Mastodon, a competing stateless platform on Elon Musk’s social network, to post links on Twitter again. The site with the little blue bird has been accused of restricting the visibility of Mastodon links for days, but on December 16, Twitter decided to simply ban users from sharing links to the platform because it was an illegal site.
