Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has condemned billionaire Elon Musk after the new Twitter chief suspended accounts of half a dozen journalists who routinely reported on him and the social media platform.
Twitter suspended the accounts of independent journalist Aaron Rupar, CNN's Donie O’Sullivan, Mashable’s Matt Binder, Drew Harwell of The Washington Post and Ryan Mac of The New York Times, all of whom have covered Mr Musk in recent months.
Twitter also suspended the official account of Mastodon, a similar social media platform that has emerged as an alternative to Twitter.
Defending the move, Mr Musk said rules banning the publishing of personal information or “doxxing” applied to everyone, including journalists.
The self-proclaimed free speech absolutist said the “same doxxing rules apply to ‘journalists’ as to everyone else” in response to a tweet on the suspended accounts.
The series of suspensions began on Wednesday when Twitter banned the account “elonjet”, which tracked his private jet in real time using publicly available data. He has also threatened legal action against the account’s 20-year-old operator Jack Sweeney, saying his son had been followed by a “crazy stalker”.
“Criticising me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not,” he said.
“They posted my exact real-time location, basically assassination coordinates, in (obvious) direct violation of Twitter terms of service,” Mr Musk added.
Responding to the billionaire’s abrupt ban on journalists, Ms Ocasio-Cortez pointed out that he should take a “beat and lay off the proto-fascism”.
She pointed out that Mr Musk was an extremely controversial and powerful public figure.
“I get feeling unsafe, but descending into abuse of power + erratically banning journalists only increases the intensity around you,” the Democratic lawmaker said.
“As someone who has been subject to real and dangerous plots, I do get it. I didn’t have security and have experienced many scary incidents,” she added.
“In fact, many of the right-wing outlets you now elevate published photos of my home, car, etc. At a certain point you gotta disconnect. Maybe try putting down your phone,” she suggested.
Mr Musk swiftly responded: “You first lol.”
After a strong pushback, the Twitter chief on Friday said there would be a seven-day suspension for doxxing. He followed his announcement with a poll asking users when should he reinstate the suspended accounts.
He later redid the poll, saying he offered too many options, after results showed 43 per cent voting positively for reinstating the accounts “now”.
CNN said it had asked Twitter for an explanation on the suspensions and said it would reevaluate its relationship with the platform based on that response.
NYT in a statement called the suspensions “questionable and unfortunate”.
“Neither The Times nor Ryan have received any explanation about why this occurred. We hope that all of the journalists’ accounts are reinstated and that Twitter provides a satisfying explanation for this action,” said the newspaper’s statement.
