Thursday Night Purge: Elon Musk’s Twitter Bans Tons Of High Profile Journalists
from the today-i-settled-all-family-business dept
Well. Just after finishing that last post about Twitter banning the official Mastodon account on Twitter for tweeting about the ElonJet tracking account existing on Mastodon, it seems that whatever brakes or controls were in place at the new “free speech absolutist” Twitter have really come off. In quick succession, a whole bunch of high profile reporter accounts were suspended, including Aaron Rupar (who famously covers and quotes videos of high profile politicians), Drew Harwell from the Washington Post, Ryan Mac from the NY Times, Donie Sullivan from CNN, and Matt Binder from Mashable.
It’s not entirely clear what “policy” these accounts violated. For all of Elon’s talk about transparency, there doesn’t seem to be very much here. A few of the accounts had talked about the ElonJet controversy but it’s not clear that they linked to it.
In Donie’s case, his last tweet had been posting the police report from the LAPD in response to questions about Elon Musk’s claim that a stalker had jumped on a car with one of his children inside. The LAPD statement said:
LAPD’s Threat Management Unit (TMU) is aware of the situation and tweet by Elon Musk and is in contact with his representatives and security team. No crime reports have been filed yet.”
And then he got banned.
Binder’s final tweet was noting what Donie’s final tweet was before getting banned.
So, look, again, content moderation at scale is impossible to do well, yada yada yada. But, uh, I’d sure like some Twitter Files on what’s going on here.
Either way, it would be nice if Musk’s supporters began to realize that (1) maybe this isn’t as easy as “no moderation” and (2) maybe the old Twitter wasn’t really evilly censoring their ideological viewpoints after all… but I fear that most are going to instead not care at all and (1) cheer on this removal of “the corporate media fake news elite” and (2) come up with some ridiculous excuse about how it’s not really a free speech issue at all.
But, of course, all of that is bullshit. Elon is free to do what he wants. Just as the old Twitter was. But, we can still call out what appears to be hypocrisy.
Update: The purge continues. Micah Lee, Tony Webster and Keith Olbermann are three more reporters now gone from Twitter.
Filed Under: aaron rupar, content moderation, donie sullivan, drew harwell, elon musk, matt binder, reporters, ryan mac
Companies: twitter
Comments on “Thursday Night Purge: Elon Musk’s Twitter Bans Tons Of High Profile Journalists”
It’s Going Down News, which was loathed by the neofash crowd, also got got on the early end of Elon’s meltdown today.
For all the people who came and screamed that Twitter was moderating based on political viewpoints, will come here and admit that it never was and this is what true viewpoint discrimination looks like.
But alas, I haven’t seen a flying monkey yet.
Re:
They always whine about “censorship” but never comment on stories featuring actual censorship (e.g., Nintendo using copyright to censor a YouTube video about a decades-old game pitch).
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It’s a matter of definitions, if you use the conservative/republican definition of ‘censorship is when someone I like/agree with faces consequences for their words and/or deeds, and can no longer use the private property of another person to speak from as a result’ then it makes sense why they wouldn’t show up for those articles because they aren’t about censorship.
"But, we can still call out what appears to be hypocrisy."
Well, we can. But it’s sort of like taking candy from a proverbial baby (a real baby is in a different league).
Pure coincidence I'm sure
Purging reporters from the platform, two of which were canned shortly after talking about the event that was used as justification to ban another account… yeah I’m struggling to see a ‘whoops, honest mistake’ explanation for what looks like a surgical removal of accounts.
Remarkable
This is just really remarkable in so many ways.
Just to pick one, Elmo’s very public decompensation is fascinating. I rather suspect 2023 will be a rocky year for Tesla.
Really seems like he’s decided to bankrupt the place, and is doing some combination of messing around with his broken toy and currying favor with the authoritarians. At least some of them – we all remember what Thiel thinks of Elmo.
What a way to live.
I got suspended from Twitter tonight…
I linked to the new subreddit https://reddit.com/r/elonjettracker and got suspended – I was @IsaacEilandHall. Seems like he’s on an unhinged banning trawl.
Elon is a Horrible Human Being. That’s All There is To It
Elon does not care about hypocrisy. He doesn’t care any time someone says “So much for being a free speech absolutist!”. As correct as it is, it’s not gonna get through to Musk or the asshole following he’s cultivated. Musk is a vindictive asshole who calls people the worst things to get them harassed while befriending alt-right dickbags and banning his critics.
Musk is a horrible human being who is being cruel and malicious on purpose. It doesn’t take a lot to figure that out. It feels like Mike is continually tip-toeing around it in these articles.
I’m going to have to side with Twitter on this one actually. It’s clear these journalists violated Twitter’s terms of use, which apparently say, “thou shalt not piss off the musk baby and his fragile ego.” This is entirely on these irresponsible “journalists” for not coddling the world’s second wealthiest narcissist.
The small upside
Banning all of those journalists from Twitter should help them do actual reporting instead of just presenting Twitter as news.
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This is just some dumb shit right here.