Late Friday night, Elon Musk unilaterally declared that he was lifting the bans on accounts of the journalists who had their accounts blocked the day before when Musk claimed they “doxxed” him by providing links to an account that tracks his private jet.
The CEO of Twitter, Tesla, and SpaceX had been fine with the jet-tracker staying on the social network he bought for $44 billion up until this week.
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Just after midnight ET, Musk tweeted, “The people have spoken. Accounts who doxxed my location will have their suspension lifted now.” Musk was referring to a poll he conducted asking users when to allow them to re-access restricted accounts.
After almost 3.7 million votes, 59% of voters preferred to lift the bans “now,” while the remaining 4% preferred to do so “in 7 days.” In a similar vein, Musk had last month decided to restore Donald Trump’s account based on a straw poll, despite having promised to create a council with “diverse viewpoints” to provide input.
The reporters Musk has barred from his platform contradict his claim that they “doxxed” him. In his capacity as Twitter’s lone decision-maker, the tech billionaire appeared to some observers to be attempting to quiet Twitter’s rivals.
“To be clear, there was no ‘doxing’ — even if an impulsive, accountable-to-nobody oligarch said so,” on Friday night, Tony Webster, a journalist and photographer whose account was among those that were suspended on December 16, tweeted. “If you aren’t willing to admit that Elon Musk lied to you about his ‘free speech’ goals, you are simply in denial at this point,” he quoted from his most recent tweet, which he had posted just before being suspended.
As of Friday night, accounts belonging to independent journalist Aaron Rupar (@atrupar), Ryan Mac (@RMac18) of the New York Times, Drew Harwell (@drewharwell) of the Washington Post, Donie O’Sullivan (@donie) of CNN, Matt Binder (@MattBinder) of Mashable, Micah Lee (@micahflee) of the Intercept, and Tony Webster (@webster) of the New York Times were restored.
Twitter also restored Friday the @joinmastodon account, which had previously posted a link to the ElonJet account on its own platform. The political analyst Keith Olbermann’s account was still suspended at the time of publication.
Musk, who calls himself a “free speech absolutist,” decided to suspend the high-profile journalists’ accounts after on Wednesday he blocked the @ElonJet account and other plane-tracking bots, citing the need to protect his family.
Also on Wednesday, Twitter announced a new policy preventing accounts from publishing users’ real-time locations, even when the information is already widely accessible. Several of the suspended media accounts had tweeted about the jet-tracker and included links to its brand-new Mastodon account.
Also read: Twitter has disbanded its Trust and Safety Council: Report
According to Musk’s statement from last month, Twitter will “amnesty” any suspended accounts and allow them to be reactivated “provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam.” The Daily Stormer’s creator and neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin were among those who Twitter banned in 2013.
Rupar tweeted, “I want to thank everyone for all the support and kind words over the past day and some change,” following the restoration of his account. “I was pretty bummed about getting suspended initially but quickly realized it’d be fine because I’m blessed to have an amazing online community. Seriously, I appreciate it a lot. Cheers.”
Less than two months ago, Musk finalised the acquisition of Twitter, which has significantly changed the business. In addition to firing 50% of Twitter’s employees, he made the decision to make Twitter Blue the only means of obtaining a “verified” blue check-mark moving forward.
