Twitter suspended the accounts of numerous well-known journalists who had lately written about Elon Musk, the company's new owner.
Drew Harwell, a reporter for the Washington Post, was one of the journalists whose accounts were suspended on Thursday. Harwell commented on the social media website Mastodon that he had just written on Musk and provided links to "publicly available, legally acquired data."
The accounts of independent journalist Aaron Rupar, who covers U.S. politics and policy, the New York Times reporter Ryan Mac, CNN reporter Donie O'Sullivan, and Mashable reporter Matt Binder were also suspended.
Recently, Mac published a number of Twitter threads about the suspension of @elonjet and conducted an interview with the account's 20-year-old operator, Jack Sweeney.
"Same doxxing rules apply to 'journalists' as to everyone else," Musk said in response to the suspensions, a reference to Twitter rules banning the sharing of personal information, called doxxing.
Musk's tweet was in response to Twitter's suspension of @elonjet, an account that tracked his private jet in real time using publicly available data, on Wednesday.
Musk had threatened legal action against the account's operator, claiming that his son had been tracked by a "crazy stalker" by mistake.
It was unclear whether all of the suspended journalists had commented on or shared news concerning @elonjet.
"Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not," Musk tweeted on Thursday.
On Thursday, he tweeted that there will be a seven-day suspension for doxxing. He then posted a poll allowing Twitter users to choose when the doxxed accounts should be allowed to resume posting.
The suspensions follow the chaotic actions taken by Twitter under Musk, including the abrupt termination of thousands of employees and members of top management, the back-and-forth over pricing for Twitter Blue, a subscription service, and the reinstatement of banned accounts like that of former President Donald Trump.
According to Ella Irwin, Twitter's new head of trust and safety, the social media platform now mainly relies on automation to monitor content, doing away with some personnel reviews and prioritizing distribution limitations over outright banning of specific statements.
"You dox, you get suspended. End of story," Musk said on the chat as Harwell rejected the assertion that he had exposed Musk's real-time location, saying he had simply posted about @elonjet.
Twitter updated its policy on Wednesday prohibiting the sharing of "live location information."
"Neither The Times nor Ryan has received any explanation about why this occurred," a spokesperson for The New York Times said. "We hope that all of the journalists' accounts are reinstated and that Twitter provides a satisfying explanation for this action."
