Twitter Suspension: Journalists Join Growing List of Banned Names

The Twitter accounts of many prominent journalists have now been placed on suspension without any specific explanation from the social networking service company. This came after the ban of an open-source social media alternative Mastodon. Before the suspension, the account linked to the Mastodon page (@ElonJet) had posted a link to the jet tracking account on its own service. The account belongs to Florida student Jack Sweeny and tracks the private jet that belongs to Twitter CEO Elon Musk. Sweeny’s personal account was also suspended from Twitter, including many bots.

Not long after the post, many links to the open-source social media were no longer active, with Twitter tagging them as “potentially harmful.”

Mastodon has gained significant momentum since Musk took over Twitter, and a lot of Twitter users added the profile link to their bios. The social media service provider has disabled all links to blocked Mastodon servers and tagged them with, “Warning: this link may be unsafe.”

Twitter Places Popular Journalists on Suspension

Some of the journalists on suspension from Twitter had shared observations or screenshots about the social media’s action against Mastodon. The victims include The New York Times’ Ryan Mac, Mashable’s Matt Binder, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, Washington Post’s Drew Harwell, Journalist Aaron Rupar, and CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan. Many impacted journalists who joined the growing list of prominent people on suspension from Twitter had covered stories on Musk taking over the bluebird app. Rupar took to Substack to release a public notice on his permanently suspended Twitter account. He posted a screenshot of the message he got from Twitter regarding the suspension:

“After careful review, we determined your account broke the Twitter Rules. Your account is permanently in read-only mode, which means you can’t Twitter, Retweet, or Like content. You won’t be able to create new accounts. If you think we got this wrong, you can submit an appeal.”

The independent journalist confirmed that he had posted a tweet about ElonJet the previous day. He said he wrote about Twitter suspending ElonJet’s account and provided a link to his Facebook page, where he is still active. Rupar stated that his posts on ElonJet could be the reason for the suspension, but he is still unaware of “what policy that could’ve possibly violated.”

Other journalists, including The New York Times’ Ryan Mac, spoke about the Twitter suspension, noting that there was no warning from the company. Mac said through an alternative account that there was no communication from the company on the matter. He also added that he reports on Twitter, Musk, and his companies and will continue to do so.

Musk, who earlier said the journalists suspension from Twitter is permanent, has tweeted a poll that invites followers to decide the fate of the accounts. The poll options include whether to unsuspend the accounts “now,” “tomorrow,” “7 days from now,” and “longer.”