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Twitter in Trouble! EU to Take Action After Journalist Suspensions
16 December 2022 at 21:52
Twitter's mass suspension of prominent journalists this week has the EU up in arms. After the accounts of Ryan Mac from the New York Times, Donie O'Sullivan from CNN, Drew Harwell from The Washington Post, political commentator Keith Olbermann, journalist Tony Webster, Micah Flee from The Intercept, Steve Herman from the Voice of America, journalist Aaron Rupar, and Mashable reporter Matt Binder were suspended temporarily for seven days, EU officials have announced that they are preparing to take action.
The cause of the suspension was initially a mystery, but Twitter CEO Elon Musk cleared up the confusion with a tweet that explained that doxxing had occurred, resulting in the seven-day ban. Even though the journalists had not engaged in live location sharing, which is against Twitter's safety policy, they seemed to have broken the rules in some other way.
It's been a wild week for Twitter users! On Wednesday, Twitter took the unprecedented step of banning the account @ElonJet, owned by college student Jack Sweeney. The account tracked Elon Musk's private jet using publicly available information. Shortly after, Musk tweeted that a car carrying his son "was followed by crazy stalker" who "blocked [the] car from moving and climbed onto [its] hood." Musk said that he was pursuing legal action against Sweeney.
Fast forward to Thursday night and a flurry of journalists were suspended for tweeting about the ElonJet account suspension and sharing the official LAPD statement regarding the incident connected to Musk's son. It just goes to show that you can't predict when Twitter will come down on an account, or who will be affected by a suspension.
These events have led to Vera Journova, vice president of Values and Transparency in the EU Commission, threatening sanctions against Twitter. She tweeted, "News about arbitrary suspension of journalists on Twitter is worrying. EU's Digital Services Act requires respect of media freedom and fundamental rights. This is reinforced under our #MediaFreedomAct."
It's great to see the EU taking a stance and protecting media freedom, as it is a fundamental right and should be respected globally. It's time for tech giants to be held accountable for their actions and abide by the same laws as the rest of us. We'll have to wait and see how this situation develops and what kind of impact it will have.
