Thin-skinned fascist Elon Musk suspends journalists’ Twitter accounts

It all started a few days ago, when thin-skinned fascist egomaniac Elon Musk decided to suspend and ban the @ElonJet Twitter account. The account merely monitored and reported Elon Musk’s private jet flights, using public data like flight paths. There are literally fan-accounts who monitor Taylor Swift’s multiple private jets too, and I’m sure there are other fan accounts reporting on other private jets. When the @ElonJet suspension story got picked up by the media, journalists were of course massively critical of Musk. Many of those journalists’ Twitter accounts are now suspended too.

Twitter appeared to suspend the accounts of several high-profile journalists who cover Elon Musk on Thursday night, including Keith Olbermann and Aaron Rupar.

The New York Times’ Ryan Mac, The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell, CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, Mashable’s Matt Binder, The Intercept’s Micah Lee and Tony Webster have also been suspended, according to NBC News.

Though it is unclear why the accounts were suspended, The Washington Post reports that many of the journalists had written about Musk banning the account on Wednesday that tracks the movements of his private jet, and had also been critical of Musk on Twitter. Some of the journalists had tweeted a link to the tracking account on Twitter rival Mastodon Social.

Olbermann confirmed to Variety that he was first suspended, then permanently suspended and shared that his last tweets were in support of other banned journalists. Olbermann will be addressing the suspension on his “Countdown” podcast soon.

“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 CNN in a statement after his suspension from the platform.

“The impulsive and unjustified suspension of a number of reporters, including CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, is concerning but not surprising,” a CNN spokesperson said in a statement to Variety. “Twitter’s increasing instability and volatility should be of incredible concern for everyone who uses Twitter. We have asked Twitter for an explanation, and we will reevaluate our relationship based on that response.”

Also on Thursday night, Mastodon’s account was suspended from Twitter. Earlier in the day, Mastodon had tweeted a link to the private jet tracker’s account on its own platform.

The jet-tracking bot was created by Florida college student Jack Sweeney — whose own personal Twitter account has also been suspended. Musk tweeted on Wednesday, “Real-time posting of someone else’s location violates [Twitter’s] doxxing policy, but delayed posting of locations are OK.”

[From Variety]

I think this is as Variety reports, mostly about @ElonJet and the reporting about the suspension of that account. But it’s also about journalists calling out Musk for hypocrisy and lies – when he bought Twitter, Musk literally made a point of saying that he was so magnanimous, he would never suspend @ElonJet. This Thursday Twitter Massacre also has something to do with Musk’s claims that the account constitutes “doxxing” (it does not) and it’s a threat to his safety (not really) and that he was accosted by a stalker… except the LAPD has no record of Musk filing any police report. What a f–king loser. Elon Musk is so g–damn pathetic.

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) December 16, 2022

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

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