Twitter CEO Elon Musk jumped into Twitter Space Thursday night to defend his decision to ban several prominent technology reporters from the platform, claiming they violated Twitter’s policies on “doxxing.” However, he quickly left after being called out for lying.
The attention-seeking billionaire abruptly suspended the accounts of reporters from The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and other outlets on Thursday night who had covered Musk’s recent dispute with Jack Sweeney, the creator of @elonjet.
Sweeney, who created the Twitter account that tracked the movements of Musk’s private jet, had his account suspended on Wednesday, despite previous assurances from Musk that he would not be banned.
Doxxing is the act of sharing information like addresses, phone numbers and emails online in an attempt to allow others to harass the individuals.
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Musk’s suspension rampage on Thursday included the Times’ Ryan Mac, the Post’s Drew Harwell, CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, The Intercept’s Micah Lee, Mashable’s Matt Binder and independent journalists Aaron Rupar and Tony Webster. Political commentator Keith Olbermann also had his account suspended.
“You dox, you get suspended,” Musk said during the Twitter space conversation with journalists. “End of story.”
“I’m sure everyone who’s been doxxed would agree, you know, showing real-time information about somebody’s location is inappropriate and I think everyone on this call would not like that to be done to them,” Musk said. “And there’s not going to be any distinction in the future between journalists and regular people. Everyone’s going to be treated the same. They’re not special because you’re a journalist. You’re just you’re a Twitter citizen. So, no special treatment.
“You dox, you get suspended. End of story,” he reiterated.
Musk also accused the journalists of “trying to be clever about it” by not directly posting his information but sharing a link to it.
However, the Twitter boss couldn’t take the heat when the journalists called him out for lying.
“Some of the people like Drew and Brian Mack from New York Times who were banned or were, you know, they were reporting on in the course of sort of pretty normal journalistic endeavors,” one journalist told Musk. “You consider that like a tricky attempted ban evasion?”
Banned Washington Post reporter Drew Harwell also confronted Musk about his misleading remarks.
“You’re suggesting that we’re sharing your address, which is not true. Harwell told Musk. “I never posted your address. We posted a link in the course of reporting about Elon jet which is now banned on Twitter.”
Harwell then called out Musk for “using the same exact link-blocking technique that you have criticized as part of the Hunter Biden New York Post story in 2020.”
“So what is different?” he asked.
“Yeah, here and there is no more acceptable for me than it is for me. Same thing,” Musk replied.
“So it’s unacceptable what you’re doing?” Harwell said.
That’s when Musk left the call.
Here is the exchange:
