Elon Musk suspends Twitter accounts of overly critical journalists, EU warns
Twitter suspended on Thursday, December 15, the accounts of several journalists who covered the social network and its new owner, Elon Musk. Some of the reporters tweeted about Twitter’s decision Wednesday to suspend the account that automatically relayed routes from Elon Musk’s private jet.
The suspended journalists include media employees such as CNN, the “New York Times” or the “Washington Post”, others are independent journalists.
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“The rash and unjustified suspension of some reporters like CNN (reporter) Donie O’Sullivan is troubling but not surprising”reacted in a press release of the American chain.
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“Twitter’s growing instability and volatility is of particular concern to anyone who uses the platform. We’ve asked for an explanation on Twitter, and we’ll review our relationship based on that response.”CNN added.
A Twitter account for the social network’s competitor Mastodon has also been suspended, according to NBC News.
The European Union is “concerned” about Twitter’s governance
The Vice-President of the European Commission, Vera Jourova, also ruled this Friday, December 16 “annoying” Twitter’s suspension of journalists’ accounts and warned the boss of the social network, Elon Musk, that there will “soon” of “penalties” applicable under the new European law.
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He recalled that the Digital Services Act – due to apply to tech giants next summer – “demands respect for media freedom and fundamental rights”. “Elon Musk should know this. There are red lines. And penalties, soon”did he say
He also said that the Media Freedom Act, a draft regulation currently under discussion intended to protect press freedom and media pluralism, would strengthen European legislation.
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The Digital Services Act (DSA), a historic regulation that began in November, imposes a long list of rules on platforms, particularly in terms of combating disinformation, against hate speech, use of sensitive data, as well as also transparency obligations.
Large online platforms (more than 45 million users in the EU), such as Twitter, have to apply this law “around summer 2023”. These major players will be placed directly under the supervision of the European Commission, which can impose fines of up to 6% of their global turnover, or even a ban on operating in the EU in case of serious violations.
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Musk claims to be the victim of harassment
Elon Musk tweeted on Wednesday that a car in Los Angeles with his son was followed by it “a crazy stalker”, and apparently pointed to tracking his private jet as the reason. He announced in this tweet that he will be suing the person behind the now suspended @ElonJet account.
Created by a student and followed by around 500,000 people, @ElonJet used public data to automatically indicate when and where the Spacex and Tesla boss’s aircraft took off and landed.
Twitter then reached out to announce that its policy now prohibits most tweets that reveal a person’s location in real time.
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“Posting someone’s location in real time violates the doxing policy, but posting it offline is allowed”, tweeted, Wednesday, Elon Musk. The term “doxing” means the public disclosure, usually on the Internet, of personal information relating to an individual, without their consent.
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When he came to the head of Twitter, Elon Musk promised that he would not touch the @ElonJet account. Since acquiring the platform for $44 billion, the billionaire has sent mixed messages about what is and isn’t allowed on it.
Passionate defender of a great freedom of expression – as long as the statements respect the law – he returned the accounts previously banned by the social network, including that of Donald Trump. But he also suspended Kanye West’s after the publication of several messages deemed anti-Semitic and denied the return to the platform of the far-right conspirator, Alex Jones.
At the end of November, the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, warned Elon Musk that he should “significantly increase efforts” to comply with EU rules, after the social network announced the mass return of banned accounts and the end of the fight against Covid disinformation.
Then Thierry Breton recalled that the Twitter boss took action in May to comply with the new European law.
