‘You Dox, You Get Suspended’: Musk Defends Banning of Twitter Accounts Critical of Him

When billionaire industrialist Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion, he did so on a pledge to make the social media platform fairer for everyone, including reviving it as a place of free debate after years of increasing content moderation. However, the banning of figures critical of him since then have led to claims of hypocrisy.

Speaking to a group of technology journalists on Thursday evening, Musk defended the most recent round of high-profile account suspensions, which included an account that tweeted the location of his private jet, as well as several prominent journalists who had criticized him in recent days.

“You dox, you get suspended,” Musk told them via Twitter Spaces. “End of story.”

“Same doxxing rules apply to ‘journalists’ as to everyone else,” Musk said in a tweet later that night, later adding, “Accounts engaged in doxxing receive a temporary 7 day suspension.”

“Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not,” Musk also said. He also compared it to giving out “assassination coordinates.”

Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 16, 2022

Twitter on Thursday took down @elonjet, run by Jack Sweeney, who created a number of such accounts tracking billionaires’ private jets in the interest of calling attention to climate change. Musk has pledged to take legal action against Sweeney, accusing him of “doxxing,” or publishing private information about a person, such as their home address, phone number, or other information that could be used to harass them in their private life.

The banned accounts belonged to reporters from prominent news outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, The Intercept, Mashable, and Vox, as well as unaffiliated prominent accounts like liberal commentator Keith Olbermann. Musk didn’t explain how any of those accounts had “doxxed” him.

Washington Post Executive Editor Sally Buzbee said the decision “directly undermines Elon Musk’s claim that he intends to run Twitter as a platform dedicated to free speech.”

Musk bought the company as part of a $44 billion deal to save it from financial collapse, but also pledging to deal with censorship and automated bots on the website. His sweeping changes to Twitter since formally taking it over in late October have become the subject of daily news updates, with thousands of staff being fired or forced out of the company and a number of longstanding policies being revoked, such as account verification for prominent public figures and the banning of right-wing accounts, such as former US President Donald Trump and online streamer Baked Alaska. The moves have come as Musk was seen bantering in a friendly way with right-wing accounts like LibsofTikTok and Andy Ngo, both of whom have organized harassment campaigns against left-wing users on the site.

Last week, a number of “Twitter Files” given to journalists by Musk have allegedly revealed the social media company’s censorship policies at the behest of liberal figures, including the banning of Trump and blocking of a story about Hunter Biden’s laptop.