Officials in France, Germany, Britain and the European Union had earlier condemned the suspension.
The episode, which one noted security researcher called the “Thursday night massacre”, is being regarded by critics as fresh evidence of Musk, who considers himself a “free speech absolutist”, taking speech and users personally. Dislike
This also happened amid an exodus of advertisers and job cuts by the company. The layoffs took place in Twitter’s engineering departments later this week, sources familiar with the matter said. The affected employees worked for the part of the company that kept the social media platform up and running and were told via email on Friday evening, reported The Information.
Shares of Tesla, an electric carmaker led by Musk, plunged 4.7 percent on Friday and posted their worst weekly loss since March 2020, with investors turning fidgety and worried about a slowing global economy. Cause
French Industry Minister Roland Lescure tweeted on Friday that following Musk’s suspension of the journalists, he would suspend his activity on Twitter.
Melissa Fleming, chief of communications for the United Nations, tweeted that she was “deeply troubled” by the suspension and that “media freedom is not a toy.”
The German Foreign Office warned Twitter that the ministry has a problem with moves that threaten press freedom.
elon jet
The suspension was caused by a disagreement over a Twitter account called Elonjet, which tracked Musk’s private plane using publicly available information.
Twitter on Wednesday suspended the account and others tracking the private jet, despite Musk’s previous tweets that said it would not suspend the Elonjet in the name of free speech.
Shortly after, Twitter changed its privacy policy to prohibit the sharing of “live location information”.
Then on Thursday evening, several journalists including those from The New York Times, CNN and The Washington Post were suspended from Twitter without notice.
In an email to Reuters overnight, Twitter’s head of trust and safety Ella Irwin said the team manually reviewed “any and all accounts” that violated the new privacy policy by posting direct links to the Elonjet account.