A freelance journalist who tweeted earlier this week Part 5 of the so-called “Twitter Files”, Apparently supplied by Elon Musk, he chastised the platform’s new owner for cracking down on critical journalists.
Journalist Bari Weiss blasted Musk in tweets on Friday for carelessly running a powerful social media platform through “whimsical crimes” after the CEO suspended the accounts of several prominent journalists who cover him on Twitter and elsewhere about his business.
“The old regime at Twitter is ruled by its own whims and biases, and it seems the new regime has the same problem,” Weiss tweeted.
“I oppose both. And I think journalists who reported a story of public importance should be reinstated,” he added.
Weiss was among a group of reporters who tweeted portions of what Musk called the Twitter Files, which revealed internal Twitter discussions about how to handle tweets about content reports on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Musk said he was appalled by the control the company exercised over user communications before he took over, so he suspended the accounts of journalists whose coverage he didn’t like. A Twitter executive said the accounts were suspended for violation of Twitter’s “privacy policies”.
Weiss also tweeted that he doubted that any “unelected individual or clique should have this kind of power over the public conversation,” referring to Musk.
Musk is upset that his private jet flights have been regularly followed on Twitter by user Jack Sweeney, a student at the University of Central Florida. Musk earlier this week started both Follow the @ElonJet account and Sweeney’s personal account — and then threatened to sue Sweeney.
After suspending several reporters from CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times, Telsa’s CEO warned Thursday that anyone who “doxxes” on Twitter — revealing another’s private or identifying information — will be suspended.
Musk considers the details of his flight — which are already publicly available to anyone — “real time” doxxing. he posted on Twitter. However, the “real-time” locations of countless people are constantly revealed on Twitter, from videos of protesters at rallies, from celebrity appearances to politicians attending rallies.
However, not all of the suspended journalists reported or linked to the flight tracking information that Musk opposes. They apparently pissed Musk off in other ways, like being able to report Tesla crash records on Auto-Pilot or, as Weiss noted, one of his other “quirks.”
Musk responded to Weiss’s attacks, even though Weiss did not respond Friday night. He accused her of “the signaling of virtues to show that you are ‘good’ in the eyes of the media elite because you have one foot in both worlds.” It seems that the second world is his.
Musk also asked Weiss what the consequences should be for “doxxing someone’s exact, real-time location.” He added: “Let’s say your child is in this position, like mine. Bari, this is a real question, not a rhetorical one. What is your opinion?”
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