Elon Musk reinstates suspended Twitter accounts of journalists

New York, Dec 17: Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk on Saturday lifted the suspension of the Twitter accounts of a several journalists that he had suspended after he accused them of endangering his family.

Taking to micro-blogging site Twitter, Musk wrote,"The people have spoken. Accounts who doxxed my location will have their suspension lifted now.'' Doxxing (also spelled doxing) is the act of revealing someone's personal information online. Doxxing is a form of online harassment that means publicly exposing someone's real name, address, job, or other identifying data.

Twitter had suspended the accounts of several prominent journalists, including ones from The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Mashable, The Intercept and independent journalists who were covering the micro-blogging platform's developments in the past few months. Twitter also started suspending accounts that was live-tracking private jets, including one that tracks a jet owned by Musk called @ElonJet.

The controversy began when the Tesla boss on Thursday claimed his little son, who goes by the name 'X', was followed by a 'crazy stalker' on the road in Los Angeles. On Friday, he also said that a time delay on reporting location that doesn't put people at serious risk of being killed is fine.

Musk had earlier said that any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation. ''This includes posting links to sites with real-time location info. Posting locations someone traveled to on a slightly delayed basis isn't a safety problem, so is ok,'' Musk wrote.

Musk had acquired Twitter last week in culmination of a USD 44 billion deal. The deal was, however, mired in controversy for several months, before the final takeover happened. Recently, Musk announced that there will be 3 check marks from now on- Gold (companies), Grey (governments) and also the Blue (individuals, celebrities or not), to identify different kinds of users on the social media platform. He also called it to be a 'painful, but necessary' measure.