Musk reactivates suspended journalists on Twitter after launching a query

Elon Musk visits the work of the Tesla Giga Factory, in Germany, in 2020. ALEXANDER BECHER (EFE)

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Elon Musk submitted to a similar decision the future on Twitter of a dozen journalists.

The businessman suspended the accounts of several informers on Thursday, without warning, for allegedly violating the rules of the social network that he bought in October.

The silence that he imposed on well-known reporters from headlines such as CNN,

and

, among others, sparked worldwide concern over a gesture that threatens freedom of expression.

Faced with these tensions, the magnate submitted for consultation to lift the punishment.

More than 3.6 million users participated in the survey.

59% have sided with the reporters.

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The journalists return, but the Musk record remains.

"The people have spoken," Musk said tonight after the poll closed, which was active for 24 hours.

"The punishment will be lifted for the accounts that shared my location," added the businessman.

This was the second poll.

Thursday night he did a similar exercise (with the same result), but he wanted to repeat it because the previous one presented too many options.

The accounts were back immediately.

"I want to thank everyone for their support and kind words," Aaron Rupar wrote after returning to the platform.

“Initially, I was very sad to be surprised, but I soon realized that everything would be fine,” added the freelance journalist, who has almost 800,000 followers.

For Musk, the issue was an alleged violation of Twitter's codes of conduct, which were amended Wednesday night following an incident involving one of his 10 children, X AE A-12.

The businessman revealed that day that the minor had been followed by a driver of a Hyundai in Los Angeles, who then blocked the way to the car and climbed on the hood.

The tycoon targeted Jack Sweeney, the user behind the @ElonJet account, which follows the tycoon's private plane trips in real time.

"Legal action has been taken against Sweeney and the organizations that have supported the harm to my family," wrote Musk, who insists that his aircraft uses special software that allows it to block its location from public radars.

Twitter not only removed the account operated by Sweeney, but his personal account.

On Wednesday, the social network deleted 25 users who, according to the company, shared personal information in real time, something that in the jargon of the Network is known as

.

Musk reported Friday night that the social network will allow blocking and silencing those who pay for the Twitter Blue subscription, which costs eleven dollars a month.

These functions may be used to penalize the opinion of other users.

The people have spoken.

Accounts who doxxed my location will have their suspension lifted now.

https://t.co/MFdXbEQFCe

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 17, 2022

On Thursday night, while many were seeking explanations for the suspension of journalists writing about Technology, it was revealed that this had been the reason for the punishment.

The source was Musk himself, who joined a Spaces conversation (the Twitter function that allows audio) to talk about it.

“In the future there will be no distinction between journalists, or those who call themselves journalists… Everyone will be treated the same.

They are not special, they are citizens like everyone else.

If you share locations you will be suspended.

End of story”, said the tycoon among hundreds of participants.

Some of these were journalists banned from Twitter.

When reporters started asking Musk questions, he dropped out of the conversation.

The Spaces function disappeared minutes later to the surprise of many.

He returned several hours later, around Friday afternoon, when Musk announced that it had been enabled again, but it was still having a lot of problems.

Katie Notopolous, the

journalist who had hosted Musk's explanations, said Friday afternoon that her account was banned from Spaces for violating the platform's rules.

Several of the journalists who were suspended, and who have returned to the platform today, defended themselves by ensuring that they did not share the location of Musk's private plane in real time.

This is the case of Linette Lopez, a journalist for

, which was deleted from Twitter this Friday morning.

“I was not tweeting about his location, but court documents from a lawsuit of his against one of my sources and where Elon himself threatens to reveal personal information of his critics.

His security team also admits that they hacked, harassed and threatened my sources, including access to his email and photos of his children, ”Lopez said on MSNBC.

The economics columnist admitted that some of the documents she posted online may have included the Tesla owner's email address.

Something similar has been said to this newspaper by Steve Herman, one of the affected reporters.

journalist

who was suspended, Drew Harwell, added context to the debate by stating that his newspaper has previously used public information from private aircraft flights for news stories.

In March of this year, they followed a plane carrying Donald Trump that had to make an emergency landing in New Orleans due to an engine problem.

In 2018, they published a story about the newspaper's owner, Jeff Bezos, and his twelve monthly flights in his Gulfstream G650ER, most of them bound for Los Angeles.

The punishment seems to have reaffirmed the convictions of several of those affected.

Ryan Mac, a journalist for

, was expelled from the social network and later sent a message from an alternate account: "I write about Elon Musk and his companies and I will continue to do so."

The secondary account was removed as well.

Tony Webster, a student at the University of Wyoming who is also a photographer and journalist, has doubled down after the suspension.

The young man has said that he will continue to use an ADS-B receiver to track aircraft around him and with the support of public information.

“Tracking is protected by the First Amendment and has facilitated a lot of reporting,” Webster wrote on Mastodon, a fledgling social network to which many have migrated following Elon Musk's tenure of Twitter.

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