Elon Musk starts banning critical journalists from Twitter

Twitter Inc on Thursday suspended the accounts of several journalists, including ones from the New York Times and the Washington Post, with the site showing "account suspended" notices for them.

Reuters could not immediately ascertain why those accounts were suspended. All the suspended reporters have in recent months written about Twitter's owner, billionaire Elon Musk, and changes at the platform since he bought it, Ndtv reports today.

Responding to a Tweet on the account suspensions, Musk tweeted: "Same doxxing rules apply to "journalists" as to everyone else," a reference to Twitter rules banning sharing of personal information, called doxxing.

He added: "Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not."

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On Thursday, Twitter suspended an account tracking Musk's private jet in real time, a month after he said his commitment to free speech extended to not banning the account.

The accounts of Times reporter Ryan Mac (@rmac18), Post reporter Drew Harwell (@drewharwell), CNN reporter Donie O'Sullivan (@donie), and Mashable reporter Matt Binder @MattBinder were suspended. The account of independent journalist Aaron Rupar (@atrupar), who covers U.S. policy and politics, was also suspended.

Twitter is now leaning heavily on automation to moderate content, doing away with certain manual reviews and favoring restrictions on distribution rather than removing certain speech outright, its new head of trust and safety Ella Irwin told Reuters this month.

Agencies