Billionaire tech CEO Elon Musk has long presented himself as a kind of champion for free speech, railing against what he deems censorship and cultural "wokeness". However, it's now become clear that Musk's love of free speech only goes so far.
Despite Musk's guarantee that the account wouldn't be banned, ElonJet, the Twitter account known for posting real-time updates on the location of Musk's private jet, was suspended on December 14.
"My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk," Musk said after purchasing Twitter in late October.
The jet-tracking account itself, with its more than 500,000 followers, wasn't the only one taken down: according to Twitter's own head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, "any and all accounts" attempting to post links to ElonJet were manually reviewed, and several journalists were suspended, including contributors for CNN, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.
"I understand that the focus seems to be mainly on journalist accounts but we applied the policy equally to journalists and non-journalist accounts today," Irwin told reporters in an email.
In the hours following their removal from the platform, the journalists began hosting a discussion on the still-accessible Twitter Spaces. Musk joined the discussion but only remained on the call for a few minutes before abruptly exiting. Soon after, the Twitter Spaces function was seemingly entirely disabled for all users, though Musk has since claimed this shutdown was caused by a "Legacy bug".
ElonJet and the journalists suspended alongside it were all using publicly available information to track Musk's jet. In the past, Musk has said that he planned on bringing Twitter's moderation rules more in line with U.S. law, but this move directly undermines that claim.
"Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation," Musk posted on Twitter following the backlash to ElonJet's ban. "This includes posting links to sites with real-time location info. Posting locations someone traveled to on a slightly delayed basis isn't a safety problem, so is ok."
Up until Wednesday, there were no rules on the site barring users from sharing someone's live location.
"When someone shares an individual's live location on Twitter, there is an increased risk of physical harm," the official Twitter Safety account posted on Wednesday. "Accounts dedicated to sharing someone else's live location will be suspended."
Musk has tried to get ElonJet to stop posting in the past. In December 2021, Musk reached out to the owner of the account, 20-year-old college student Jack Sweeney, to ask him to take down ElonJet, offering Sweeney up to $5,000 "to shut this down."
