Twitter suspensions continue for critics of the Man Child

Elon Musk starts banning critical journalists from Twitter

The suspensions began on Thursday.

The VergeMitchell Clark, Alex Heath, and Elizabeth Lopatto

Mitchell Clark, Alex Heath, and Elizabeth Lopatto writing for The Verge:

Twitter has suspended the accounts of several prominent reporters who cover Elon Musk, including Ryan Mac of The New York Times, CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell, The Intercept’s Micha Lee, Mashable’s Matt Binder, Aaron Rupar, and Tony Webster. This evening, Musk logged into a Twitter Space to try to explain why, and ran a poll asking when the journalists should be unbanned — in both instances, things didn’t exactly go his way.

It was never really in doubt that Musk would start inserting himself into moderation decisions on Twitter, but I honestly didn’t expect him to go so far so quickly. Not that I have any kind of fundamental belief that journalists need to be a protected class on a social network, but come on, he had to realise what a can of worms he was opening by blocking not just small indie journalists, but actual public figures who have the ability to meaningfully influence public debate.

As an aside, I can’t believe news organisations are still embedding tweets in articles like those embeds won’t start failing any time soon.