Twitter Spaces: Confrontation with suspended journalists December 15, 2022 Shortly after Twitter suspended several journalists over the @ElonJet tracking row, Musk briefly joined a Twitter Space where the suspended reporters confronted him about the bans; he left after a few minutes and the Space shut down.
Shortly after Twitter suspended several journalists over the @ElonJet tracking row, Musk briefly joined a Twitter Space where the suspended reporters confronted him about the bans; he left after a few minutes and the Space shut down.
Transcript Elon Musk
Well, as I'm sure everyone who's been docs would agree, you know, showing real time information about somebody's location is inappropriate. And I think everyone on this call would not like that to be known to them. And there is not going to be any distinction in the future between journalists, so called journalists, and regular people. Everyone's going to be treated the same. You're not special because you're a journalist. You're just, you're a Twitter, you're just, you're a citizen. So no special treatment. You dox, you get suspended, end of story. So, and ban evasion. Ban evasion. Or like, or trying to be clever about it, like, oh, I posted a link to the real time information is obviously, that is obviously simply trying to evade the meaning. That is there's no different from pen and paste than actually showing real time information.
Moderator
So when you're saying posting a link to it, I mean, some of the people like Drew and Ryan Mack from the New York Times who were banned were, you know, they were reporting on it in the course of sort of pretty normal journalistic endeavors. You consider that like a tricky attempt at ban evasion.
Elon Musk
You show the link to the real time information. Ban evasion. Obviously,
Moderator
Drew, I don't think you were posting the real time information. Right.
Drew Harwell (journalist)
I mean, you're suggesting that we're sharing your address, which is not true. And you're suggesting that we're posting. I never posted your address.
Elon Musk
You posted a link to the address.
Drew Harwell (journalist)
We posted a link. In the course of reporting about Elonjet, we posted links to elonjet, which are now not online and now banned on Twitter. And Twitter also of course marks even the Instagram and Mastodon accounts of Elon Jet as harmful. Using, you know, we have to admit, acknowledge using the same exact link blocking technique that you have criticized as part of the Hunter Biden New York post story in 2020. So what is different here and there?
Elon Musk
It's no more acceptable for me, for you than it is for me. Same thing. So anyway, so it's unacceptable
Drew Harwell (journalist)
what you're doing.
Elon Musk
No, what you dox, you get suspended, end of story. That's it.