Twitter suspends accounts of journalists who refer to Musk’s flight info

The Twitter accounts of certain journalists from CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post, among others, have been suspended. Musk says journalists are doxxing him for posting links to an account with public flight details from his private jet.

The journalists have not been told by Twitter why their accounts have been suspended, but on Twitter says owner Elon Musk that the suspensions are related to the Twitter account @ElonJet. This account tracked flights of Musk’s private jet based on public flight data. On Thursday, Twitter suspended this account after the platform introduced a new rule prohibiting the sharing of real-time location data. Musk claims to have created this rule after a stalker attacked Musk’s child, although it is not clear whether the stalker used ElonJet data for this.

Journalists from various media have posted tweets about this news, also referring to the Facebook– and Mastodon accounts of ElonJet, where Musk’s public flight data is still distributed. Musk says that distributing these links to the Facebook and Mastodon accounts is equivalent to sharing real-time location data and therefore doxxing. “Journalists are not special,” says Musk. Therefore, the same rules apply to these journalist accounts. The suspension applies for seven days.

They posted my exact real-time location, basically assassination coordinates, in (obvious) direct violation of Twitter terms of service

—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 16, 2022