Twitter chief Elon Musk said on Saturday he would reinstate the accounts of several journalists suspended from the platform, whom the billionaire previously accused of sharing private information about his whereabouts.
“The people have spoken. Accounts who doxxed my location will have their suspension lifted now,” Mr Musk tweeted after a majority of people on the platform responding to his survey voted to have the journalists’ accounts reinstated.
On Thursday, the accounts of several journalists who covered Twitter and Mr Musk were suspended in what seemed like an arbitrary move by the company’s new boss.
The suspended accounts included those of reporters with The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and other publications.
Mr Musk accused these journalists of sharing private information about his whereabouts that he described as “basically assassination coordinates”, while providing no evidence for his claim.
“You dox, you get suspended. End of story. That’s it,” he said on a Twitter Space discussion on Thursday.
The series of suspensions began after Twitter banned the account ”ElonJet”, an account run by 20-year-old Florida college student Jack Sweeney, that tracked the Tesla and SpaceX chief’s private jets using publicly available data.
“Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation. This includes posting links to sites with real-time location info,” the multibillionaire said.
The accounts of several journalists covering Twitter and Mr Musk were also suspended.
When questioned about the abrupt ban, the Tesla chief said: “Same doxxing rules apply to ‘journalists’ as to everyone else.”
Several groups across the world expressed concerns over journalists’ account suspensions.
Vera Jourova, vice president for Values and Transparency at the European Union (EU) said news about the suspension of journalists on Twitter was “worrying”.
“Existing EU media rules and new digital regulations taking effect next year require “respect of media freedom and fundamental rights…Elon Musk should be aware of that. There are red lines. And sanctions, soon”, Ms Jourova said.
Germany’s Foreign Ministry said it “got a problem” with not being able to follow the suspended accounts, adding that “press freedom must not be switched on and off at will”.
Then in a poll on Twitter, Mr Musk asked when he should unsuspend accounts that doxxed his location, adding criticising him “is fine” but “doxxing” his real-time location and “endangering” his family was not.
After results of the poll revealed that a majority of the respondents wanted him to reinstate the accounts, he said on Saturday that the suspended accounts will be reinstated.
