Following a Twitter referendum, Musk reinstates journalists who had been suspended:- After users decided to restore the accounts of prominent journalists who cover the company and its new billionaire owner, he declared that “the people have spoken.”
Several prominent journalists who had their Twitter accounts suspended on Thursday night had them restored early on Saturday.
Elon Musk tweeted, “The people have spoken.
Twitter users cast their votes in Musk’s poll to reinstate the accounts after they were abruptly terminated. The new owner of the social media site has used Twitter polls to make a number of notable choices, including reactivating former President Donald Trump’s account.
Aaron Rupar, Keith Olbermann, and Tony Webster, as well as independent journalists Ryan Mac of The New York Times, Donie O’Sullivan of CNN, Drew Harwell of The Washington Post, Matt Binder of Mashable, Micah Lee of The Intercept, Steve Herman of Voice of America, and Matt Binder of Mashable, all had their accounts suspended as of Thursday night.
Early on Saturday, the Mashable journalist tweeted, “Matt Binder is back.”
On Saturday morning, Olbermann’s account looked to be still suspended.
In the early hours of Saturday, Musk announced that the suspensions, which he had first claimed would remain for seven days, would now be lifted for the “accounts that doxxed my whereabouts.”
He has charged the media with disclosing personal information about his whereabouts, calling it “essentially assassination coordinates,” in his accusation.
Doxx, you are put on hold. End of story. That’s all,” Musk said Thursday night as he laid out his most recent policy in an audio presentation to more than 30,000 listeners on Twitter Space.
He was alluding to the most recent Twitter policy modification that went into effect on Wednesday regarding accounts that follow private jets, including one that belongs to Elon Musk.
A number of the journalists who had been suspended had been writing about the new rule and Musk’s justification for it, which featured his claims that his family had been the target of a stalking incident on Tuesday night in Los Angeles.
In a tweet posted on Wednesday, Musk claimed that a motorist had followed and stopped one of his cars while one of his kids was inside, climbing on top of the hood to prevent the car from going.
The Los Angeles Police Department said on Thursday that no police reports had been made. Other law enforcement agencies also patrol certain areas of the Los Angeles metropolitan area.
Any account that divulges a person’s current location would be suspended, according to Musk, as it violates physical safety. This includes links to websites that offer real-time location information.
Posting regions someone visited relatively later is OK because it poses no safety risks, continued Musk.
However, the suspended accounts did not tweet about the precise location of the vehicle Musk claimed his child was travelling in. Musk’s private jet’s whereabouts was previously revealed by flight information tweeted by one of the blocked accounts, “@elonjet.” Several of the journalists who were barred from Twitter had previously posted links to the account and other profiles managed by the account’s founder Jack Sweeney, whose personal Twitter account was also suspended.
Flight data contains information about where a plane lands, but it does not track a plane’s passengers outside of the aircraft, making it impossible to determine Musk’s or his children’s current whereabouts if they were not in the vicinity of the aircraft or on board.
Connections to Mastodon and other autonomous, decentralised networks were barred as “unsafe” links that could no longer be tweeted, and Twitter’s account for Mastodon, a platform that has grown to be one of its main rivals, was also suspended on Thursday.
Free speech experts slammed the suspensions on Thursday, and Musk supporters and several influential conservatives joined them in doing the same.
Musk had sworn to run Twitter as an absolute defender of free expression, and since taking over, he has suspended some accounts connected to the far-right QAnon movement and other organisations while restoring others.
He has also fired firm employees who opposed his policies.