December 2022 Twitter suspensions
On December 15, 2022, Twitter suspended the accounts of ten journalists who had covered the company and its owner, Elon Musk. They included reporters Keith Olbermann, Steven L. Herman, and Donie O'Sullivan, as well as journalists from The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and The Intercept. Musk cited an incident between "a crazy stalker" and a car with his child as a justification for the suspensions. Posters on behalf of the owners of the accounts said that the suspensions were permanent. On December 16, 2022, Musk said that account access would be restricted for only seven days, and on December 17, some accounts were reportedly restored, with Musk citing Twitter community polls as the reason for the reversal.
Twitter officials initially offered no explanation for their decision. They later said it was due to violations of a new rule, created one day before the bans took place. The policy change prohibited accounts from sharing real-time flight information of private jets. The bans were allegedly in response to the @ElonJet account, which tracks Musk's private jet. The account and other similar accounts were suspended from Twitter on December 14, 2022, but continued operating on Facebook, Mastodon, and other social media platforms.
Several of the suspended journalists said they had not violated the rule, and while some had included links to @ElonJet in their articles or reported about the account, it was already suspended at the time of media reports. The Twitter account of Mastodon, a rival social-media platform, was also suspended on December 15 after linking to @ElonJet on a Mastodon server. Users were unable to share Mastodon links in their tweets and they were labeled as "potentially harmful" and containing "malware".
The suspensions drew criticism from various organizations and individuals. Some said the actions undermined Musk's repeated claims of supporting free speech on Twitter, while others said Musk had a history of doxxing and harassing people in similar ways, which he was now criticizing. The suspensions were condemned by representatives of several countries and organizations, including the United Nations and the European Union. EU officials said the actions may have violated the Digital Services Act, which could result in sanctions or even a ban of Twitter in Europe. The Government Accountability Project filed a complaint to the United States Congress regarding the suspensions.
Background
Business magnate Elon Musk purchased the social media company Twitter for $44 billion on October 27, 2022, after a lengthy process that began when Musk made the initial purchase offer on April 14, 2022, then later rescinded the deal after it was accepted. The company sued Musk to compel him to honor his offer, and although Musk had announced his intent to fight in court, he reversed course. Upon acquiring Twitter, Musk fired several top executives, fired half of the workforce, and proposed changes to the platform, such as removal of spambots and open-sourcing Twitter's algorithms.One of Musk's primary pledges upon acquiring Twitter was promoting free speech, something he has been criticized for failing to do since. He was previously concerned that Twitter was censoring conservative viewpoints, and said the platform would allow all legal speech. He has described himself as a "free speech absolutist". Acting on this conviction, Musk then restored several accounts that were permanently suspended before his purchase, including Donald Trump, whose account @realDonaldTrump had been suspended for tweets that allegedly helped incite the January 6 United States Capitol attack.
Before the Twitter account suspensions of December 14 and 15, 2022, Musk shared concerns about the accounts that tracked his jet. Specifically, he criticized the Internet bot account @ElonJet, which used publicly available flight data to track trips taken by Musk's private plane. The account, which was started by a college student named Jack Sweeney, had more than 500,000 followers as of December 2022. Sweeney also ran a version of the bot on the social networking platform Instagram. In January 2022, before Musk purchased Twitter, he privately offered Sweeney $5,000 to delete the account. Sweeney rejected the offer and asked for $50,000, to which Musk did not agree. After Musk purchased Twitter, Sweeney cited screenshots provided by a Twitter employee indicating the company limited the reach of the @ElonJet account, though he said those restrictions were later removed. In November 2022, Musk publicly said he would not ban @ElonJet, despite claiming the account "is a direct personal safety risk", because of his "commitment to free speech".
Account suspensions
Twitter policy changes
On December 14, 2022, the social media platform created the new rule that was used to ban accounts publishing the real-time location and movement of private jets. Specifically, Twitter's private information and media policy was modified to include a clause prohibiting the sharing of live location data: "we will remove any tweets or accounts that share someone's live location". The word "jet" does not appear anywhere in the Twitter policy, but according to CNN reporter Donie O'Sullivan the rules "appeared to be designed specifically to justify the removal of the jet-tracking account".Twitter's official @TwitterSafety account issued messages about the policy change, writing that they would remove tweets that posted live location information and suspend accounts dedicated to doing so. They clarified that users were allowed to share their own live location and the "historical" location of someone else, but "not same-day" information. Musk himself also tweeted about the new policy on December 14.
Suspension of flight-tracking accounts
The day the new rule was implemented, Twitter suspended the @ElonJet account, as well as the personal account of its creator. Other similar accounts were also suspended, including some that followed the planes of other billionaires such as Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. Some of these had also been operated by Sweeney, who defended himself, telling NBC News: "All I'm doing is taking their data and putting it on Twitter. There's nothing I'm doing wrong, and I didn't mean any harm."On December 14, Musk said that a car carrying one of his children had been followed by a "crazy stalker, who later blocked car from moving & climbed onto hood". In the same tweet, Musk said he would take legal action against Sweeney and "organizations who supported harm to my family" as a result of the alleged altercation. Musk publicly posted video footage of a man who he said was the person involved in the incident. The man in the video was also using his smartphone to record whoever was filming him, and Musk included the man's license plate in the video clip, asking his followers if anyone recognized him. The South Pasadena police were called to the scene, but no report had been filed. They found no link to suggest the ElonJet account had contributed to the confrontation. The department believes the suspect is a member of Musk's security team.
Suspension of journalist accounts
On December 15, 2022, the social networking service Twitter suspended the accounts of several journalists who routinely reported on the platform and Musk, including:| Journalist | Twitter Handle | Organization |
| Matt Binder | @mattbinder | Mashable |
| Drew Harwell | @drewharwell | The Washington Post |
| Steven L. Herman | @W7VOA | Voice of America |
| Micah Lee | @micahflee | The Intercept |
| Ryan Mac | @rmac18 | The New York Times |
| Donie O'Sullivan | @donie | CNN |
| Linette Lopez | @lopezlinette | Business Insider |
| Keith Olbermann | @keitholbermann | Countdown with Keith Olbermann |
| Aaron Rupar | @atrupar | freelance |
| Tony Webster | @webster | freelance |
Additionally, the Twitter account for Mastodon, a competitor of Twitter, was suspended on December 15, and users were unable to post any links to some of the most popular Mastodon servers in their tweets. Twitter did not initially say why the Mastodon account was suspended or if specific rules had been broken, but earlier in the day, it linked to one of Sweeney's ElonJet accounts hosted on the Mastodon platform. Although Mastodon's account was suspended and its links were blocked, the term "Mastodon" was a trending topic after the changes. It was not initially clear if the ban would be permanent, but Musk later clarified that the suspension would last seven days. Other journalist accounts were also suspended after December 15. Susan Li, a television journalist with Fox Business Network, was suspended on December 16 after posting a link to an aircraft tracking website in an attempt to demonstrate the ease with which Musk's jet could be tracked using public data. The account of Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz was suspended on December 17 for "prior doxxing action", but was quickly restored.
Explanation from Twitter and Musk
Musk publicly responded to the journalist suspensions a few hours after they occurred. He said the accounts were suspended for doxxing, specifically in violation of Twitter's new rule banning accounts that track the location and movement of private jets. That new rule was created on December 14, 2022, the day before the journalist accounts were suspended, in response to accounts that provided information about Musk's private jet. Musk said the suspended accounts posted his "exact real-time location, basically assassination coordinates, in direct violation of Twitter terms of service".Musk defended his actions in a series of tweets. In one, he wrote: "Same doxxing rules apply to 'journalists' as to everyone else". In another, he wrote: "Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not." Ella Irwin, Twitter's head of trust and safety, told Reuters that the organization manually reviewed "any and all accounts" in violation of the policy, which included posting links to @ElonJet. She said: "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."
A few hours after the suspensions, Musk defended the action during a discussion on Twitter Spaces, a social audio feature of the platform, which was hosted by BuzzFeed reporter Katie Notopoulos and had more than 30,000 listeners. Several of the suspended journalists as well as the creator of the @ElonJet account participated, and were able to join due to a bug that allowed suspended accounts to join Twitter Spaces. During the conversation, Musk repeatedly said, "You doxx, you get suspended. End of story. That's it." Drew Harwell, one of the suspended journalists, was able to dialogue with Musk about the suspensions briefly, but Musk left the chat a few minutes after joining, and the Twitter Spaces service was abruptly shut down, disconnecting all the users in Notopoulos's space. Musk later said Twitter Spaces was temporarily unavailable due to a "legacy bug" and that it "should be working tomorrow". The Twitter Spaces feature remained offline for several hours, although several users, including the conversation's host, found themselves suspended from the service once it became available again.
Following the Mastodon account suspension and ban on sending Mastodon links, a new policy was introduced on December 18 that prohibited sharing of links to a variety of social media sites, including Facebook and Instagram, along with Mastodon. The new Twitter policy would have disallowed such links in tweets and on account profiles, and would trigger suspensions of accounts in violation of this rule. By December 19, Twitter's new linking policy and official mentions about it had been removed, and Musk later said that banning users for posting Mastodon links was a mistake.