Twitter suspends accounts of Mastodon and journalists covering Elon Musk

Twitter Inc. suspended the accounts of several journalists who have been covering billionaire Elon Musk, who acquired the social network in October, and that of upstart rival service Mastodon.

Late Thursday, accounts for reporters from publications including The Washington Post, The New York Times, Mashable, CNN and Substack were listed as blocked and their tweets were no longer visible, with the company's standard notice saying it "suspends accounts that violate the Twitter rules."

Twitter also suspended the feed of social media site Mastodon, which earlier had posted a link on its Twitter page to an account on its own site that uses publicly available flight data to track Musk's private jet. On Wednesday, Twitter had suspended multiple accounts that followed private jet locations, including Musk's.

Musk, who has called himself a "free-speech absolutist" and took over Twitter with the goal of eliminating censorship, later tweeted that posting someone's location in real time on the social network violates the company's policy against publishing certain personal details, "but delayed posting of locations are OK."

An email to Twitter seeking comment on the journalists' suspensions, sent to the company's general press inquiry address, wasn't immediately returned.

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.