Twitter suspends the accounts of journalists who criticize Musk

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Twitter suspends the accounts of journalists who criticize Musk

In a shocking report by Motherboard, it has been revealed that Twitter have suspended numerous journalists who reported on news which displeased the platform’s owner Elon Musk – despite his claims of advocating “freedom of expression”.

On Thursday evening, Twitter silenced a number of leading journalists who had published critical reports on Elon Musk by banning them from the platform.

Two journalists – Matt Bender of Mashable and Donnie O’Sullivan from CNN- have been barred due to their exposé on Elon Musk’s assault against a motorist who had collided with a car carrying his child. The article was based on the Los Angeles Police Department report.

On Thursday, NBC’s Ben Collins experienced a ban for simply tweeting about the restriction of Mastodon on their rival social networking site. Not only that, but The New York Times journalist Ryan Mack was also prohibited.

Expressing his outrage, Drew Harwell of the Washington Post exclaimed “I love freedom of speech” in a recent tweet. A spokesperson for the New York Times expressed their dismay to Motherboard that some popular journalists’ Twitter accounts had been inexplicably suspended tonight, dubiously adding: “We trust that all journalist’s accounts will be restored and that Twitter offers an appropriate explanation for this surprising action.”

Twitter recently banned Mastodon’s account after it posted a link to an “elonjet” file, created by 20-year-old programmer Jack Sweeney. The script automatically tweets the location of Musk’s plane on public data obtained from Federal Aviation Administration transponders.

On Wednesday night, Twitter blocked Sweeney’s personal account, Elon Jet and a myriad of other flight-tracking accounts in an unplanned turn of events that concluded with Musk issuing a statement about the aggressor from Los Angeles; he even attached a video clip displaying an unidentified individual and their license plate. He also appealed to his mammoth 121 million followers to identify them.

This year, Musk made headlines when he purchased Twitter in a staggering $44 billion deal. He is celebrated as an advocate for freedom of speech and has proclaimed that his platform will not be used to censor beyond legal parameters. To demonstrate this, Musk declared that accounts following themselves would never be shut down due to their avid support of the right to express oneself freely.