Musk says he lifted suspensions of journalists’ Twitter accounts after poll

Twitter CEO Elon Musk said he has lifted the suspensions imposed on several journalists’ accounts on the platform earlier this week after participants in a poll he posted called for the accounts to be restored immediately.

“The people have spoken. Accounts who doxxed my location will have their suspension lifted now,” Musk tweeted early Saturday morning. 

The results of the poll showed that about 59 percent of Twitter users who voted favored lifting the suspensions “now,” while about 41 percent said they should be lifted in seven days.

Most of the suspended accounts have been unlocked, but the account for Insider’s Linette Lopez was still suspended as of Saturday afternoon.

The announcement came after Musk received widespread backlash from commentators on both sides of the political aisle, some politicians and journalists over the accounts being blocked. 

But Steven Herman, the chief national correspondent for Voice of America and one of the journalists whose accounts was suspended, told The Hill that Musk’s tweet was misleading.

He said he was only allowed to remove the “offending tweets” or file an appeal against the suspension. He said he appealed, and his entire Twitter was blocked.

Herman said he previously could see other tweets but not direct messages or notifications. He said he can no longer see his timeline.

“So appealing puts one in a deeper level of purgatory,” Herman said.

Musk has emphasized that he aims to protect “free speech” on the platform, but some critics slammed him for hypocrisy after the journalists were suspended. 

Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) tweeted on Thursday that Musk had just told her team that the platform would not retaliate against journalists who published criticism of him on Twitter, shortly before the accounts were suspended. 

Musk has claimed that the journalists were providing personal information about his location that amounted to “assassination coordinates.” The reporters and commentators have said they were covering Twitter’s suspension of another account that tracked the location of Musk’s private jet using publicly available information. 

Musk had previously said he would not suspend that account shortly after he acquired Twitter. 

He said doxxing and giving real-time information on someone’s location should not be considered protected free speech. But conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who has been mostly supportive of the changes Musk has made to the platform, said the suspended account tracking Musk’s jet was not doing those things. 

Shapiro tweeted that he is sympathetic to Musk wanting to stop doxxing on Twitter, but noted that doxxing is generally defined as giving someone’s specific current location, not speculating based on flight information available to the public.