So much for the “free speech Twitter” experiment, it seems.
Elon Musk came to Twitter with $44 billion and a promise of abject and absolute freedom of speech. When he arrived, he immediately began warning of bankruptcy and censoring those whom he was not fond of.
This week, the erratic behavior took a turn for the worse.
On Thursday evening, Twitter suspended a number of prominent journalists on the platform without warning or explanation.
The situation followed the company’s decision to suspend the Twitter account of Mastodon, an open source social media alternative that’s built momentum since Elon Musk took over at the company. Twitter took action against Mastodon after the account linked to the Mastodon page of @ElonJet, a student-made bot that tracks the whereabouts of Musk’s private jet.
At least some of the accounts suspended had shared screenshots and observations about Mastodon’s suspension. Just prior to his suspension, Washington Post reporter Drew Harwell tweeted about Mastodon being kicked off the platform.
And these were not just random reporters…
Former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, The New York Times’ Ryan Mac, CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, Mashable’s Matt Binder, and journalist Aaron Rupar were also suspended Thursday evening. Many of the reporters regularly covered Musk’s takeover of Twitter in recent months.
Elon has gone from eccentric to egregious over the course of the last few months, but this behavior appears to be both petty and pretentious.
