Twitter cites 'doxxing' to suspend accounts of journalists; What else did Musk say?

New York, Dec 16: Elon Musk's Twitter has recently 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.

However, it not immediately known as to why their Twitter accounts were suspended, but each page included a message that read the 'account suspended' as it 'violated the Twitter rules', the media has reported.

Twitter also started suspending accounts that was live-tracking private jets, including one that tracks a jet owned by Musk called @ElonJet.

While responding to a tweet on the suspension of accounts of journalists, Musk notified the world of the Twitter updated policies banning sharing of personal information, called doxxing. Musk wrote,"Same doxxing rules apply to "journalists" as to everyone else.'' "Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not," Musk added.

Taking to his official Twitter handle, Musk later made it clear that accounts indulging in doxxing will be penalized. "Accounts engaged in doxxing receive a temporary 7 day suspension," the Tesla CEO wrote.

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.

For the unversed, 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.

Among several changes that Twitter has witnessed since the takeover by Musk, the company is now leaning heavily on automation to moderate content, doing away with certain manual reviews and favouring restrictions on distribution rather than removing certain speech outright, its new head of trust and safety Ella Irwin was recently quoted as saying by Reuters.

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.