Elon Musk will restore the Twitter accounts of banned journalists under a few conditions
3 min read
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Elon Musk has offered to reinstate the Twitter accounts of journalists who were banned after sharing public data about the billionaire’s plane.
Here is everything you need to know.
Elon Musk offers to unsuspend banned journalists banned from Twitter
Elon Musk is offering suspended journalists the choice to return to Twitter under certain conditions.
For the unversed, Musk banned multiple high-profile journalists on 15th December from Twitter. Moreover, some of these names included Ryan Mac (New York Times), Drew Harwell (Washington Post), and Donie O’Sullivan (CNN).
However, Musk began an unscientific poll on his Twitter handles about the reversal of the banned journalists Twitter accounts.
In addition, the poll ended on Friday night with 59% of Twitter users i.e. around 4 million people voting in favor of lifting the ban immediately. Meanwhile, the other 41% of participants wanted the ban to stay for a whole week.
The people have spoken.
Accounts who doxxed my location will have their suspension lifted now. https://t.co/MFdXbEQFCe— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 17, 2022Advertisement
Regardless, Musk announced the result on his profile. Consequently, he wrote, ‘The people have spoken. Accounts who doxxed my location will have their suspension lifted now.’
Additionally, the removal of the ban came with a condition that prohibited journalists from publishing ‘live location information.’
In other words, users cannot share the location of a person, ‘regardless if this information is publicly available.’
Elon Musk banned journalists from Twitter for allegedly ‘doxxing’ him
Elon Musk revealed that the journalists were banned from Twitter for revealing the real-time locations of others.
He said, ‘They posted my exact real-time location, basically assassination coordinates, in (obvious) direct violation of Twitter terms of service.’
In a follow-up tweet, he stated, ‘The journalists were aware of the violent stalker and yet still doxxed the real-time location of my family. Turns out that’s a criminal offense …’
Twitter reacts to the restoration of banned journalists from the site
Although some welcomed the reinstatements of the banned journalists on Twitter, they continued to express concern over the issue.
Furthermore, Volker Turk, the United Nations chief stated, ‘Twitter has a responsibility to respect human rights: @elonmusk should commit to making decisions based on publicly-available policies that respect rights, including free speech. Nothing less.’
Besides that, reporter Donie O’Sullivan from CNN, who was among the journalists to get suspended and reinstated revealed that he could not tweet as the site was demanding he deletes one of his posts. Moreover, he claimed that he would appeal to address the matter.
1. No evidence yet that there was any kind of a stalker, let alone a violent one.
— Dan Murphy (@bungdan) December 18, 2022
2. His refusal to file a police report strongly suggests it's a sleazy fabrication.
3. No one – not a journalist, not anyone – "doxxed" the real time location of his family.
Elon Musk is a liar. pic.twitter.com/qRtMjYhffM
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