On Thursday, Elon Musk’s Twitter abruptly banned the accounts of multiple journalists, including CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, The New York Times’ Ryan Mac, and The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell and several other tech journalists, the news outlets reported.
The account of progressive independent journalist Aaron Rupar was also banned, CNN reported.
“Elon says he is a free speech champion and he is banning journalists for exercising free speech. I think that calls into question his commitment,” Harwell told the network.
Aaron Rupar told NBC’s Ben Collins he had “no idea” why the suspension happened.
The suspensions came after Twitter shut down on Thursday an account belonging to Mastodon, an emerging competitor.
As noted by the Washington Post, “No reason for the suspensions was given, though many had written or tweeted about the dramas surrounding billionaire Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media platform”
A message on the accounts simply says they have been suspended for violating Twitter’s rules.
Twitter has been drastically reshaped since Musk formally took ownership of the company in October. He has disbanded teams that address hate speech and civil rights abuses and demanded that the company update policies on the fly to target accounts and critics that irritate him.
Many of the suspended accounts had recently written about a dispute between the platform’s owner, Elon Musk, and another Twitter user who had tracked the billionaire’s private jet travels. https://t.co/ovC95V2tTE
— Linda Hill (@bulldoghill) December 16, 2022
Journalists who cover Elon Musk have been suspended on Twitter tonight: @Donie O'Sullivan from CNN, Aaron Rupar and the Washington Post's @drewharwell.
Rupar tells me he has "no idea" why it happened.
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) December 16, 2022
