Twitter’s mercurial new boss has allowed right-wing extremists to return, while banning reporters on flimsy excuses
It has been a chaotic week on Twitter, even by the standards of Elon Musk’s brief tenure as the site’s owner and CEO. Shortly after abruptly suspending the Twitter accounts of several prominent reporters for the New York Times, the , CNN and other outlets, Musk reinstated several accounts associated with far-right commentary which had been banned for spreading misinformation about the 2020 election or the COVID pandemic.
Musk claimed the journalists in question had „doxxed“ him by publishing articles about Musk’s suspension of a Twitter account that had shared public information about the movements of his private jet. In fact, their articles did not share any information about Musk’s real-time location or that of any of his family members. At most, they wrote about sites where that information was hypothetically available.
„If you doxx, you get suspended,“ Musk posted earlier in the week. That’s it. End of story.“ Shortly after that he changed his mind, tweeting that Twitter would lift the suspensions following the results of a public poll on the site in which a majority of respondents favored doing so immediately.
Musk’s feud with journalists seemed to become increasingly capricious as the days passed. He also suspended the account of Insider columnist Linette Lopez, who hadn’t written anything about the flight-tracker site or Musk’s private jet, but has reported on his business career for years. All this has unfolded against the backdrop of Musk’s announced „amnesty“ for a large number of suspended accounts with a verifiable record of posting misinformation and amplifying false right-wing talking points, according to Media Matters.
Musk has reportedly reinstated more than 15,500 accounts, including such prominent users as Donald Trump, British far-right commentator Katie Hopkins, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, former Trump aide turned podcaster Steve Bannon and various others. Many reinstated accounts belong to allies of Trump and MAGA World personalities who promoted falsehoods about the election or played important roles in fueling the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, for example, has remained one of Trump’s most tireless supporters in spreading outlandish claims that the 2020 election was stolen or rigged by an array of foreign hackers and left-liberal operatives.
