Twitter suspends journalists who were reporting on Elon Musk

Several journalists across various publications have found themselves unable to access their Twitter accounts tonight. They’ve been suspended on the website, and according to NBC News Senior Reporter Ben Collins, one thing they had in common was that they covered the social network and Elon Musk, who once described himself as a “free speech absolutist.” Collins listed the suspended journalists’ accounts on a Twitter thread, including CNN’sDonie O’Sullivan whose last tweets included his interview with Jack Sweeney, the college student who ran the @ElonJet account. 

The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell lost his account following a tweet about how Twitter suspended Mastodon, its rival social network that’s been gaining popularity since Musk took over, after it posted a link to the account that tracked Musk’s private jet. The New York Times’Ryan Mac lost access to his account after talking about Sweeney and Twitter’s policy changes following @ElonJet’s suspension. Mashable’sMatt Binder also found himself suspended after retweeting a post doubting Musk’s claim that he and his son were followed by a “crazy stalker” and another about how Twitter’s new head of trust and safety invited a QAnon-adjacent group to discuss a partnership. 

Next in the list is Micah Flee from The Intercept who recently tweeted: “So much more arbitrary censorship on Twitter since @elonmusk took over.” Sports and political commentator Keith Olbermann was suspended while one of Engadget’s editors was reading a thread on his account. Olbermann’s last tweets also included criticisms of Musk’s announcement that he’s taking legal action against Sweeney and Twitter’s policy changes after the suspension of the Musk’s stalker incident. Aaron Rupar, an independent journalist who was also suspended, posted a response on Substack and said he tweeted that the “@ElonJet account that was suspended from Twitter was still active on Facebook, with a link to the Facebook page.”

As you can see, most of the banned accounts talked about Sweeney or linked to @ElonJet in some way. Before the account got permanently suspended, it tracked flights of Musk’s private jet using publicly available data. (Other accounts tracking the planes of government agencies and high-profile individuals got suspended, as well.) Musk announced a policy change for Twitter after the account’s suspension that prohibits the doxxing of real-time location info. In a response to that announcement, he said the car carrying his child was followed by a stalker. He also said that he is taking legal action against Sweeney and organizations “who supported harm to [his] family.”

Engadget reached out to Twitter for a statement, and we’ll update this post when we hear back. But replying to a user saying they’ve confirmed that the suspended accounts linked to @ElonJet, Musk insinuated that they were booted off the website due to its new doxxing rules. He also said in a separate tweet that criticizing him “all day long is totally fine, but doxxing [his] real-time location and endangering [his] family is not.”

Following the suspensions, The Washington Post Executive Editor Sally Buzbee released a statement via Mastodon saying that Harwell’s suspension “directly undermines Elon Musk’s claim that he intends to run Twitter as a platform dedicated to free speech.” CNN said it asked Twitter why the website banned journalists and would “reevaluate [its] relationship based on that response.” Meanwhile, Musk said on Twitter that accounts “engaged in doxxing receive a temporary 7 day suspension” as a response to his tweet insinuating that the journalists were banned due to the website’s new doxxing rules.  

Later in the evening, Musk joined a Spaces chat hosted by BuzzFeed journalists. He was confronted by Drew Harwell, who was supposed to be suspended, consequently highlighting a “bug” in Spaces itself. 

Twitter ultimately ended up pulling the Spaces feature because it allowed suspended accounts to join voice chats. Musk had earlier left the chat silently after being asked the reasons behind the suspensions.

Twitter suspends account that tracked Elon Musk’s private jet

A Twitter account that tracked the flights of Elon Musk’s private jet is no more. The company has permanently suspended @ElonJet, as Jack Sweeney, a college student who ran the account, noted.

Sweeney used publicly available flight data to operate @ElonJet and accounts that track flights of other public figures. Over the weekend, Sweeney said screenshots provided by a Twitter employee indicated that the company limited the reach of @ElonJet. On Monday, Sweeney said it seemed there were no longer any restrictions on the account, but Twitter has since dropped the banhammer. By Wednesday afternoon, Twitter had suspended Sweeney’s personal Twitter account too. Later that same day, Twitter revealed an update to its private information policy, noting that sharing “live location” information about another person is now prohibited. 

In January, a few months before Musk announced a deal to buy Twitter, he offered Sweeney $5,000 to delete the account. Sweeney rejected the overture, instead asking for $50,000. As CNBC notes, @ElonJet had more than half a million followers. Sweeney also runs a version of the bot on Instagram.

Self-proclaimed free speech absolutist Musk, who has caused chaos at Twitter since taking over the company, suggested in November that he would not ban @ElonJet, despite claiming the account “is a direct personal safety risk.” It’s unclear whether Musk himself reversed course or one of his employees made the call to suspend @ElonJet. Twitter no longer has a communications department that can be reached for comment.

Update 12/14 2:36PM ET: Noted that Twitter has suspended Sweeney’s personal Twitter account.
Update 12/14 8:00PM ET: Added information about Twitter’s updated private information and media policy.

Instagram launches its BeReal clone, Candid Stories

Instagram’s BeReal clone is now official. Meta introduced “Candid Stories,” a new feature with Instagram Stories that recreates BeReal’s signature once-a-day selfies. The feature will be testing in South Africa to start, according to a company spokespe…

Twitter disbands its Trust and Safety Council of external advisors

Twitter has dissolved its Trust and Safety Council via email and less than an hour before its members’ Zoom meeting with the company’s executives, according to The Washington Post and NPR. The council was reportedly supposed to discuss recent developments and changes on the website under Elon Musk, but the email said that the members’ help is no longer needed. Its members were apparently informed that Twitter is “reevaluating how best to bring external insights” and that the council is no longer “the best structure to do this.”

The company disbanded the group just a few days after three members resigned from their voluntary positions. In their letter, they said the well-being of Twitter’s users is on the decline despite Musk’s claims and that the executive should not be allowed to define digital safety. In a response to the news of their departure, Musk tweeted: “It is a crime that they refused to take action on child exploitation for years!” After that tweet, NPR said some remaining members sent a letter to Twitter demanding the company to stop misrepresenting the council’s role, as attacks against former and current advisors continued to grow worse. 

The Trust and Safety Council members aren’t employees handling moderation on the website, and they have no power to make decisions or to review banned accounts and specific tweets. They’re a group of external advisors from expert and anti-abuse organizations, including the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, YAKIN (Youth Adult Survivors & Kin in Need), the Samaritans and GLAAD, volunteering their time to help Twitter figure out how to fight hate and harassment. When Twitter formed the council in 2016, it said the group’s purpose is to make the website a less toxic place so that “anyone, anywhere can express themselves safely and confidently.” 

Another member, the Committee to Protect Journalists, has confirmed to Engadget that it received a letter from Twitter announcing the council’s dissolution. Twitter apparently told the committee that it plans to continue engaging with partner organizations through “bilateral or small group meetings” and “regional contacts.” CPJ President Jodie Ginsberg also said: “Mechanisms such as the Trust and Safety Council help platforms like Twitter to understand how to address harm and counter behavior that targets journalists. Safety online can mean survival offline. Today’s decision to dissolve the Trust and Safety Council is cause for grave concern, particularly as it is coupled with increasingly hostile statements by Twitter owner Elon Musk about journalists and the media.”

More members were on the verge of resigning before the group was dissolved, Larry Magid, chief executive of Silicon Valley nonprofit ConnectSafely, told The Post. He said: “By disbanding [the council], we got fired instead of quit. Elon doesn’t want criticism, and he really doesn’t want the kind of advice he would very likely get from a safety advisory council, which would likely tell him to rehire some of the staff he got rid of, and reinstate some of the rules he got rid of, and turn the company in another direction from where he is turning it.”

Musk said in October that he will form a “moderation council” made up of members with “widely diverse viewpoints” before he reinstates banned accounts. But in an interview in November, he admitted that he will still have the final say in making decisions. Twitter has yet to introduce a moderation council, but Musk has already reinstated previously banned accounts’, such as Donald Trump’s and Andrew Anglin’s, the neo-Nazi creator of The Daily Stormer. 

Update 12/13/22 2:52AM ET: Add statement and information from the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Elon Musk says Twitter is developing a feature that shows if you’ve been ‘shadowbanned’

Elon Musk has announced that Twitter is currently working on a software update that will give you access to a tool that can clearly show whether you’ve been shadowbanned. The term means different things for different platforms, but being shadowbanned typically makes your posts invisible to other users or makes your profile hard to find without your knowledge. Musk says the upcoming tool will also explain the reason why you’ve been shadowbanned and will give you instructions on how to submit an appeal. 

Instagram has just launched a similar feature with its latest update, letting you know whether you’re currently blocked from recommendations. At the moment, it can only show if you’ve been blocked from recommendations in Explore, Feed and Reels, but Instagram is working on expanding the tool so that you can see if you’re also blocked from showing up in “suggested accounts.” 

Musk didn’t talk about how Twitter will be implementing the feature, but he made the announcement shortly after Bari Weiss released part two of The Twitter Files. In the thread, Weiss said that Twitter used “Visibility Filtering,” which is apparently just another term for shadowbanning, on some conservative personalities. Musk once called himself a “free speech absolutist.” After taking control of Twitter, he started lifting the bans on several controversial users, including former President Donald Trump, The Daily Stormer’sinfamous neo-Nazi creator Andrew Anglin and other white nationalists. 

Advertisers have been fleeing the platform since Musk took over due to concerns about policy changes and the reinstatement of banned accounts. In a blog post late last month, Twitter assured advertisers that “none of [its] policies have changed.” And according to a new report by Reuters, Twitter is gearing up to release a set of ad controls in an effort to lure advertisers back to the website. The controls, which could launch as soon as next week, will reportedly allow advertisers to prevent their ads from appearing above or below tweets with the specific keywords they choose.

Instagram is telling creators when and why their posts are ‘shadowbanned’

Instagram’s latest update aims to help creators better understand one of the most frustrating aspects of the app: the dreaded “shadowban.” The app is updating its account status feature to help creators “understand if their account’s content is eligible to be recommended to non-followers.”

With the change, Instagram will allow anyone using a “professional” account to see if their posts are currently blocked from recommendations. The notice will appear in the app’s “account status feature,” and show users “a selection” of offending posts, offering the chance to edit or delete them, or appeal any decision they think was a mistake.

For now, the feature only covers posts that have been blocked from recommendations in Explore, Feed and Reels. But the company says it’s working on expanding the feature so creators will know if they are blocked from suggestions at the account level as well, such as in search or “suggested accounts.”

Though Instagram avoids using the word “shadowban,” the change is clearly meant to address long-running complaints from creators about why their posts aren’t being distributed in the way they expect. To diffuse these concerns, the company has tried in recent years to better explain how its algorithm works, and pointed to its recommendation guidelines to help creators understand the inner workings of the app.

“We know reach can be volatile,” Instagram Head Adam Mosseri said in a video about the update. “We know it’s important for creators to understand how Instagram works if they’re going to use it over the long run.” 

By now showing users exactly why their content is being removed from recommendations, the company is hoping creators will be able to take steps to “fix” their mistakes. At the very least, it could give creators some satisfaction to see an acknowledgement that their content has indeed been reduced in visibility, and provide the opportunity to ask for a second look. An Instagram spokesperson said review teams will work “as quickly as possible,” but didn’t say how long the step could take.

Correction: An earlier version of this story cited an older video Mosseri posted about account status. This post has been updated to reflect Mosseri’s most recent comments about the feature.