Mask unblocked accounts of journalists after criticism
2022.12.17 14:15
Mask unblocked accounts of journalists after criticism
Budrigannews.com – Several journalists’ Twitter accounts, which had been suspended for a day due to a controversy over publishing public data about the billionaire’s plane, were reinstated by Elon Musk.
After the unprecedented suspensions on Friday drew harsh criticism from government officials, advocacy groups, and journalism organizations from all over the world, some of whom claimed that the microblogging platform was threatening press freedom, the suspensions were reinstated.
Additionally, a Twitter poll Musk later conducted revealed that the majority of respondents desired the accounts to be restored immediately.
“The majority has spoken. Musk stated in a tweet on Saturday that “Accounts who doxxed my location will have their suspension lifted now.”
A request for comment from Reuters was not immediately responded to by Twitter. The journalists’ suspended accounts, which included those from CNN, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, were found to have been reinstated by Reuters.
Although he expressed that he remained concerned, the U.N. chief of human rights welcomed the reinstatements.
“Twitter is obligated to uphold human rights: @elonmusk ought to focus on settling on choice in light of openly accessible approaches that regard privileges, including free discourse. Nothing less,” wrote the high commissioner for human rights at the United Nations, Volker Turk.
Donie O’Sullivan, a CNN reporter who was one of the journalists who were suspended and then reinstated, claimed that he was still unable to tweet due to the platform’s demand that one of his posts be removed. He promised to appeal.
The suspensions had already been condemned by representatives from the European Union, Britain, France, and Germany.
Critics view the incident, which was dubbed the “Thursday Night Massacre” by a well-known security researcher, as fresh evidence of Musk, who views himself as a “free speech absolutist” and prohibits speech and users he dislikes.
It also took place as the company cut jobs and as advertisers left. According to people with knowledge of the situation, Twitter’s engineering departments have seen layoffs this past weekend. According to The Information, the affected employees were informed via email on Friday evening and worked for the division of the company that was responsible for maintaining the social media platform.
Tesla shares (NASDAQ:), a company that makes electric cars, led by Musk, lost 4.7% on Friday, posting their worst weekly loss since March 2020. Investors became increasingly concerned that Musk was distracted and that the global economy was slowing.
In response to Musk’s decision to suspend journalists, Roland Lescure, the minister of industry in France, announced via Twitter on Friday that he would also cease all Twitter activity.
The UN’s head of communications, Melissa Fleming, tweeted that the suspensions “deeply disturbed” her and that “media freedom is not a toy.”
Twitter was notified by the German Foreign Office that the ministry had a problem with actions that threatened press freedom.
The disagreement that led to the suspensions was over a Twitter account called ElonJet that used publicly available information to track Musk’s private plane.
Despite Musk’s previous tweet that he would not suspend ElonJet for free speech, Twitter suspended the account and others that tracked private jets on Wednesday.
Twitter changed its privacy policy shortly after to say that “live location information” cannot be shared.
Then on Thursday night, a few writers, including from the New York Times, CNN and the Washington Post, were suspended from Twitter with no notification.
Ella Irwin, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, stated in an overnight email to Reuters that the team manually reviewed “any and all accounts” that posted direct links to the ElonJet account, in violation of the new privacy policy.
In the email, Irwin stated, “I understand that the focus appears to be primarily on journalistic accounts, but we applied the policy equally to journalists and non-journalistic accounts today.”
The General public for Propelling Business Altering and Composing said in an explanation on Friday that Twitter’s activities “disregard the soul of the Primary Change and the rule that virtual entertainment stages will permit the unfiltered dispersion of data that is now in the public square.”
Musk said that the journalists were providing his family with “basically assassination coordinates” by posting his real-time location.
A brief appearance by the billionaire in a journalist-hosted Twitter Spaces audio chat quickly escalated into a contentious debate regarding whether the suspended reporters had in fact violated the policy by disclosing Musk’s real-time location.
“You get suspended if you dox. End of story,” Musk in response to inquiries repeatedly stated. Dox” refers to the dissemination of private information about another person, typically with malicious intent.
Drew Harwell of The Washington Post, one of the journalists who had been suspended but was still able to participate in the audio chat, refuted the claim that he had posted a link to ElonJet and exposed Musk or his family’s precise location.
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The host of the Spaces chat, BuzzFeed reporter Katie Notopoulos, tweeted shortly after that the audio session had abruptly ended and that the recording was unavailable.
In a tweet making sense of what occurred, Musk said “We’re fixing a Heritage bug. Should be functioning
