Elon ‘Free Speech’ Musk Un-Suspends Accounts of Journalists Who Criticized Him

Twitter has reinstated the accounts of the prominent journalists who were suspended Thursday after billionaire and self-avowed free speech enthusiast Elon Musk silenced several of his high-profile critics.

New York Times reporter Ryan Mac, The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell, Mashable’s Matt Binder, CNN reporter Donie O’Sullivan, The Intercept’s Micah Lee, political commenter Keith Olbermann, independent journalist Aaron Rupar, and freelance journalist Tony Webster were removed from the platform Thursday night.

More from Rolling Stone

• Elon Musk's New Twitter Policy: No More Links to Rival Sites

• Elon Musk Blasts Crony Bari Weiss for Disagreeing With Journalist Ban

• Tesla Stock Plunges to Two-Year Low After Musk Bans Journalists From Twitter

In response to Breitbart‘s Rebecca Mansour concern over the suspensions, Musk declared a “7 day suspension for doxxing.” Later that night, he posted a Twitter poll calling on users to vote on the suspension’s terms.

However, when the results of that 24-hour poll leaned nearly 59 percent towards immediately reinstating the suspended accounts, Musk acquiesced. “The people have spoken,” he tweeted. “Accounts who doxxed my location will have their suspension lifted now.” The journalists’ accounts were then reinstated, albeit without the offending tweets.

Musk claimed the bans were a result of “endangering his family.” In a separate tweet, he also claimed that, “They posted my exact real-time location, basically assassination coordinates, in (obvious) direct violation of Twitter terms of service.” There is no evidence the journalists endangered Musk or his family in any way.

The journalists, however, share a common thread of critical coverage of Musk and his management and policy decisions following his October takeover of Twitter, including a recent controversy over Twitter shutting down an account that tracked Musk’s private jet. In a retroactive change to Twitter’s content moderation policy, Musk announced that any instances of posting real-time location data would be treated as a form of doxxing, and result in a suspension of the account. Musk attempted to link developer Jack Sweeney’s flight tracking data project to an incident in which he claims an individual followed a car carrying his son. No evidence has come to light that the individual was motivated by or gathered information from Sweeney’s account. Nevertheless, Musk threatened legal action against him.

“I was banned on Thursday night immediately after sharing a screenshot from CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan moments after he was suspended,” Binder told Rolling Stone. “The screenshot was an official LAPD statement regarding the incident Elon Musk was tweeting out about last night which led him to suspending ElonJet and its creator Jack Sweeney. I did not share any location data, as per Twitter’s new terms. Nor did I share any links to ElonJet or other location tracking accounts. I have been highly critical of Musk but never broke any of Twitter’s listed policies.”

The Times criticized Musk for suspending Mac. “Tonight’s suspension of the Twitter accounts of a number of prominent journalists, including The New York Times’s Ryan Mac, is questionable and unfortunate,” Charlie Stadtlander, the newspaper’s Director of External Communications said in a statement to Rolling Stone. “Neither The Times nor Ryan have received any explanation about why this occurred. We hope that all of the journalists’ accounts are reinstated and that Twitter provides a satisfying explanation for this action.”

In addition to Musk’s critics, Twitter is also going after its business rivals, suspending competitor Mastodon’s Twitter account on Thursday. The moves to silence critics and rivals follows Musk’s efforts to paint himself as a “free speech” advocate pushing back on the evils of cancel culture. He has tweeted catchphrases like “Sunlight is the best disinfectant” and “Transparency is the key to trust.” In April, he memorably posted, “I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means.”

The tweet was followed by further clarification, as Musk said that any non-government action to censor or moderate platforms went against “the will of the people.”

On Thursday night, Musk also joined a Twitter Spaces chat dedicated to reporters suspended from Twitter that was hosted by Buzzfeed tech journalist Katie Notopoulos and included Sweeney among the speakers.

“There’s not going to be any distinction in the future between journalists and regular people. Everyone’s gonna be treated the same. You’re not special because you’re a journalist. You’re a citizen. So no special treatment,” Musk said during the live discussion. “You dox, you get suspended, end of story. That’s it.”

However, about three minutes into the discussion, Musk abruptly left the conversation after Notopoulos challenged his rationale for banning journalists and Harwell pointed out Musk was using the same link blocking techniques he critiqued in the Hunter Biden controversy in 2020. A short while later, the Space cut out and everyone in the chat was booted off.

On Friday, Twitter banned the account belonging to Business Insider‘s Linette Lopez, who has reported extensively on Tesla, another of Musk’s companies.

As of Saturday morning, although the majority of journalists’ were un-suspended, Lopez’s account has still not been reinstated.

In a recent interview with Reuters, Ella Irwin, Twitter’s remaining vice president for trust and safety, said Musk has encouraged the company to rely more on automation and less on human review when making content moderation decisions. However, former staffers warned that Musk’s mass firing of security staff and increased reliance on automation is going to make it easier for tyrants to silence their critics.

Now that Musk holds the keys to the Twitter kingdom, however, he seems to have found some speech — namely, criticism of him by anyone whose soap box rivals his own — to be out of bounds.

This story was updated Friday, Dec. 16 with Linette Lopez’s Twitter ban. This story was updated Saturday, Dec. 17 following the journalists’ reinstatement.

Best of Rolling Stone

• All 229 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked

• The Who's 50 Greatest Songs

• Fleetwood Mac's 50 Greatest Songs

Click here to read the full article.