Twitter suspends journalists who wrote about Elon Musk

A number of high-profile news journalists in the US who wrote about Elon Musk‘s time at Twitter have had their accounts suspended.

On Thursday (December 15) the accounts of The New York Times’ Ryan Mac, The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell, CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, Mashable’s Matt Binder and freelancer Aaron Rupar, all of whom had written about Musk and Twitter recently, were suspended without explanation.

NBC‘s Ben Collins spoke to Rupar and reported that the journalist had “no idea” why he had been suspended, with further accounts then being locked later in the evening.

Musk and Twitter have yet to respond to the suspensions although Musk did tweet late at night last night: “Twitter right now is [fire].”

Twitter right now is

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 16, 2022

Later, the Twitter boss replied to a since-deleted tweet saying: “Criticising me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not.”

Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 16, 2022

This week, it was reported that Musk is no longer the world’s richest man after a steep drop in the value of Tesla shares.

The tech mogul billionaire, who also heads up SpaceX, has now been overtaken by Bernard Arnault, the chief executive of luxury goods company LVMH, according to Forbes and Bloomberg.

The Tesla CEO’s wealth had reportedly been cut in half from its $340billion (£285billion) peak, in part due to his $44billion (£35billion) Twitter purchase. Forbes reported that, as of Wednesday (December 14), Musk is now worth $176billion (£144billion). Arnault, meanwhile, is worth $187billion (£151billion).

Musk’s high-profile purchase of Twitter took place in October – a move that has since continued to generate headlines and controversy.

The entreprenuer spent weeks wrestling with a paid verification system and banning people for impersonating him. In the wake of the executive firings, the site was rumoured to be on the brink of collapse, before Musk allegedly told the remaining staff that they must “work long hours at high intensity” or leave the company.

The paid verification ‘Twitter Blue’ option has now relaunched along with new gold ticks to indicate businesses in a measure that he described as “painful, but necessary”.

Since the takeover, Elton John has been among those to leave the platform, with the singer saying that he cannot allow “misinformation to flourish unchecked”.

This week, Musk was also booed off stage during a Dave Chappelle gig.