Twitter owner Elon Musk has reinstated the accounts of several prominent journalists he suspended from the social media platform for reporting on controversy surrounding the publication of public data about the billionaire's plane.
The reinstatements came after the unprecedented suspensions evoked stinging criticism from government officials, advocacy groups and journalism organisations around the world, with some saying the microblogging platform was jeopardising press freedom.
The Twitter accounts of reporters from The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Voice of America and Mashable were suspended on Thursday, with Mr Musk claiming the journalists were sharing his "exact location in real-time".
A Twitter poll that Mr Musk conducted later showed that a majority of the respondents wanted the accounts restored immediately.
A Reuters check showed the journalists' suspended accounts had been reinstated.
However, the Twitter account of Business Insider columnist Linette Lopez remained suspended on Saturday.
Lopez, who published a series of articles between 2018 and 2021 highlighting what she called dangerous manufacturing shortcomings at Mr Musk's Tesla car company, had her account suspended on Friday.
Tesla shares plummet as advocates warn of threat to press freedom
Mr Musk's banning of the journalists who reported and commented on the banning of the account @elonjet were widely condemned as the new Twitter owner had portrayed himself as a "free speech absolutist".
The account @elonjet tracks Mr Musk's private plane using publicly available information.
Roland Lescure, the French Minister of Industry, tweeted on Friday that, following Mr Musk's suspension of journalists, he would suspend his own activity on Twitter.
Melissa Fleming, head of communications for the United Nations, tweeted she was "deeply disturbed" by the suspensions and that "media freedom is not a toy".
The German Foreign Office warned Twitter that the ministry had a problem with moves that jeopardised press freedom.
The episode is being regarded by critics as fresh evidence of the billionaire eliminating speech and users he personally dislikes.
Shares in Tesla slumped 4.7 per cent on Friday and posted their worst weekly loss since March 2020, with investors increasingly concerned about his being distracted and about the slowing global economy.
Musk claims journalists posted 'assassination coordinates'
On Wednesday, Twitter suspended the @elonjet account and others that tracked private jets, despite a previous tweet from Mr Musk saying he would not suspend @elonjet in the name of free speech.
Shortly after, Twitter changed its privacy policy to prohibit the sharing of "live location information".
Then on Thursday evening, the group of journalists were suspended from Twitter with no notice.
In an email to Reuters, Twitter's head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, said the team manually reviewed "any and all accounts" that violated the new privacy policy by posting direct links to the ElonJet account.
"I understand that the focus seems to be mainly on journalist accounts, but we applied the policy equally to journalists and non-journalist accounts today," Irwin said in the email.
The Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing said in a statement that Twitter's actions "violate the spirit of the First Amendment and the principle that social media platforms will allow the unfiltered distribution of information that is already in the public square".
Mr Musk accused the journalists of posting his real-time location, which is "basically assassination coordinates" for his family.
The billionaire appeared briefly in a Twitter Spaces audio chat hosted by journalists, which quickly turned into a contentious discussion about whether the suspended reporters had actually exposed Mr Musk's real-time location in violation of the policy.
"If you dox, you get suspended. End of story," Mr Musk said repeatedly in response to questions.
"Dox" is a term for publishing private information about someone, usually with malicious intent.
ABC/wires
