Twitter suspends the accounts of several journalists

(Reuters) – Twitter Inc suspended several accounts on Thursday of journalists including those from the New York Times, Washington Post and Washington Post. The site displayed “account suspended notices” for them.

Reuters was unable to immediately determine why these accounts were suspended. All of the suspended reporters have written recently about Elon Musk and the changes made to Twitter since he purchased it.

Musk responded to a tweet about account suspensions. He tweeted: “Same Doxxing Rules Apply to Journalists as to Everyone else.” This refers to Twitter rules that prohibit sharing personal information.

He stated that while criticizing me is acceptable, doxxing and endangering my family’s real-time location is not.

Twitter did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

Twitter suspended @elonjet Thursday, an account that was monitoring Musk’s private aircraft in real-time. This comes a month after Musk said that his commitment to free speech included not banning the account.

Ryan Mac, Times reporter and Post reporter Drew Harwell (@drewharwell), Donie O’Sullivan, CNN reporter (@donie) and Matt Binder, Mashable reporter @MattBinder accounts were all suspended. Aaron Rupar (@atrupar), an independent journalist covering U.S. policies and politics was also suspended.

A spokesperson for The New York Times stated: “Tonight’s suspending of the Twitter accounts of a few prominent journalists, including Ryan Mac from The New York Times is questionable. Ryan and The Times have not received any explanations as to why this happened. We hope that all accounts of journalists will be restored and that Twitter can provide a satisfactory explanation.

The other reporters couldn’t be reached immediately.

Mastodon’s official account (@joinmastodon), which was created as an alternative to Twitter after Musk bought it for $44 Billion in October, was also temporarily suspended. Mastodon could be reached immediately for comment.

Twitter is now heavily relying on automation to moderate content. It has eliminated certain manual reviews and favors restrictions on distribution rather that removing certain speech, Ella Irwin (its new head of trust & safety) told Reuters.

(Reporting by Sheila Dang. Katie Paul. Paresh David, Costas Pitas, and Sayantani Ghosh; Editing: William Mallard.

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