December 19, 2022
The Twitter accounts of several journalists who had been suspended after Elon Musk accused them of endangering his family were reinstated Saturday after a user vote.
The suspensions were the result of a disagreement over a Twitter account called ElonJet, which used publicly available information to track Musk’s private plane.
Musk drew ire and warnings from the European Union and the United Nations after suspending the accounts of more than a half-dozen prominent journalists from The New York Times, CNN, The Washington Post, and other outlets. The criticisms claimed that the microblogging platform was endangering press freedom.
According to Musk’s Twitter poll, a majority of respondents wanted the accounts of those who doxxed Musk’s exact location in real-time restored immediately, with 58.7% of 3,690,639 votes requesting immediate reinstatement and 41.3% supporting 7 days.
While the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, welcomed the reinstatements, he expressed concern. Officials from France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the European Union all condemned the suspensions. But Musk went on to justify the suspension saying “If anyone posted real-time locations & addresses of NYT reporters, FBI would be investigating, there’d be hearings on Capitol Hill & Biden would give speeches about end of democracy!”
Despite the suspension being lifted, Twitter offered full access to the platform only if they deleted posts about tracking his location.
The sources for this piece include an article in Reuters.
