Last night, Elon Musk sent out an email about an inevitable death spiral, banning many journalists in high-profile places, preventing users from sharing Mastodon accounts and scouring out of a Twitter Space discussion when he was called out for being hypocritical.
It began around 8:00 U.S. Eastern Time when the Irish Journalist Donie OSullivan reported that, even if Musks claimed that a stalker used his private jets flight data to chase down his son, no police report had been filed with the Los Angeles Police Department. The masked author, Matt Binder, retweeted a quote from OSullivan. The account of OSullivan was suspended immediately. Both accounts were suspended because of non-respect of Twitter rules, but neither journalists received explanations of which rules they had broken.
i bless the rains in castamere (@Chinchillazllla) December 16, 2022.
A cascade of suspended articles was found to be a mischievous problem for journalists Keith Olbermann, Aaron Rupar, Drew Harwell and others that saw their accounts shut down mysteriously.
When multiple users identified Twitter as a link to their Mastadon.social account, they didn’t even link to Twitter. They received an error when they tried to tweet links to their Mastodon profiles. Users found that even clicking on an existing link to Mastodon caused an error message warning the link was unsafe.
Didi Kirsten Tatlow (@dktatlow) December 16, 2022.
The Twitter account for Mastodon itself soon was also suspended.
In the evening, the Buzzfeed writer Katie Notopoulos hosted a Twitter space for journalists to talk about what was happening. Since Matt Binder failed to keep his accounts in order, he could join the space. Likewise, Musk joined the conversation, claiming that OSullivan, Binder and the presumably suspended journalists had doxxed him by linking to ElonJet, a long-time banned account that posted the flight paths of his private jet. Doxxing refers to the publication of a liar’s house address and contact information for someone with whom they are not talking about or making an announcement about information and data, such as the flight path.
It has a big smile. Elon Musk just entered the Twitter Spaces chat with a handful of journalists. He was dismissed by the journalist who banned him, because he was lying about posting links to his personal information. He left almost immediately after being pressed.
Bradley Eversley (@ForeverEversley) December 16, 2022.
The journalist said that there will be no distinction in the future between journalists, academic journalists and regular people, in the space. Everybody needs to be treated the same. Being a journalist and citizen is not special. There isn’t any special treatment. You get suspended. End of story.
When Notopoulos noted that Binder, Ryan Mac, and other journalists had done basic reporting on a public situation, Musk responded with “You post a link to real-time information?” Avoid this altogether.
When Drew told Musk no journalist didxxed him, and told Musk that he himself criticized the ban, not the accounts whose opinions were not likeable by Twitter decision-makers left the space.
Musk stayed up later. Immediately before night, the bany journalists posted his real time location and address, and accused them of sharing assassination coordinates. There is no evidence that his claims are true.
(shown by Theodore Gogol (Video)).