On December 15, 2022, Twitter suspended the accounts of ten journalists who have covered the company and its owner, Elon Musk. They included reporters Keith Olbermann, Steven L. Herman, and Donie O'Sullivan, and journalists from The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and The Intercept. The suspensions came after an incident that occurred on December 14, when a stalker followed Elon's 2-year-old son while he was traveling in a car by a stalker who thought Elon was in the car. Musk said the accounts had violated a policy on doxxing. Posters on behalf of the owners of the accounts were quick to claim that the suspensions were permanent before Musk clarified account access would be restricted for seven days. Some of the accounts were restored earlier.
Twitter officials initially offered no explanation for their decision. They later stated it was due to violations of a new rule, created one day before the bans took place. The policy change prohibited accounts from sharing real-time flight information of private jets. The bans were allegedly in response to the @ElonJet account, which tracks Musk's private jet. The account and other similar accounts were suspended from Twitter on December 14, 2022, but continued operating on Facebook, Mastodon, and other social media platforms.
Several of the suspended journalists said they had not violated the rule, and while some had included links to @ElonJet in their articles or reported about the account, it was already suspended at the time of media reports. The Twitter account of Mastodona rival social-media platformwas also suspended on December 15 after linking to @ElonJet on a Mastodon server. Users were unable to share Mastodon links in their tweets and they were labeled as "potentially harmful" and containing "malware".
Musk wrote of the suspensions that "same doxxing rules apply to 'journalists' as to everyone else" and "you doxx, you get banned. End of story." Musk ran two informal Twitter polls, asking followers when the accounts should be restored. In both cases, a majority of users said it should happen immediately. On December 16, following those polls, Musk reinstated several of the accounts, though others remained suspended and some journalists were told their accounts would not be restored unless they deleted certain posts, as outlined in the Twitter enforcement policy.
The suspensions drew criticism from various organizations and individuals. Some said the actions undermined Musk's repeated claims of supporting free speech on Twitter, while others said Musk had a history of doxxing and harassing people in similar ways, which he was now criticizing. The suspensions were condemned by representatives of several countries and organizations, including the United Nations and the European Union. EU officials said the actions may have violated the Digital Services Act, which could result in sanctions or even a ban of Twitter in Europe. The Government Accountability Project filed a complaint to the United States Congress regarding the suspensions.
Background
Business magnate Elon Musk purchased the social media company Twitter for $44 billion on October 27, 2022, following a lengthy process that began when Musk made the initial purchase offer on April 14, 2022, then later rescinded the deal after it was accepted. The company sued Musk to compel him to honor his offer, and although Musk had intended to fight in court, he reversed course. Upon acquiring Twitter, Musk fired several top executives, fired half of the workforce, and proposed changes to the platform, such as removal of spambots and open-sourcing Twitter's algorithms.
One of Musk's primary pledges upon acquiring Twitter was promoting free speech. He was previously concerned that Twitter was censoring conservative viewpoints, and said the platform would allow all legal speech. He has described himself as a "free speech absolutist". Acting on this conviction, Musk then restored several accounts that were permanently suspended before his purchase, including former U.S. President Donald Trump, whose account @realDonaldTrump had been suspended for tweets that allegedly helped incite the January 6 United States Capitol attack.