Is Elon Musk having inconvenient Twitter accounts blocked? This suspicion is growing. Only recently, journalists who criticized Musk and a tracking account for Elon Musk's private jet were banned from the short message platform.
Reporters from the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN - numerous accounts of influential journalists were recently blocked on Twitter. They all had two things in common: they criticized Musk's management style on Twitter and linked to an account that published the latest live data on the location of the billionaire's private jet. However, the reasons for the account suspensions seem flimsy and inconsistent.
What exactly is it about?
Jack Sweeney - a 20-year-old student from Orlando - programmed a bot that he linked to the Twitter account "@ElonJet". Explosive: the account regularly posted data about Elon Musk's private jet. This included departure airports, flight routes, fuel consumption, CO2 emissions and landing times. More than a million people followed the Twitter account. Sweeney became popular, gave television interviews and publicly haggled with Elon Musk on Twitter about the conditions under which he would switch off his bot.
Twitter reacts - and blocks @ElonJet
Apparently too much of a good thing for Elon Musk. Twitter blocked the account in mid-December. This was probably due to the fact that Musk offered the student 5,000 US dollars and a free Tesla for closing the account - and the student refused. The block raises many questions. As recently as November, Elon Musk had emphasized that he felt so committed to freedom of expression that he would not even have the Twitter account that published data from his private jet blocked.
Journalist accounts also affected
But Jack Sweeney's account was not the only one to be targeted by the billionaire. The accounts of several critical tech journalists were also blocked. These included the accounts of Donie O'Sullivan (CNN, 300,000 followers) and Aaron Rupar (freelance journalist, 800,000 followers). They had all linked to the @ElonJet account. The reasoning: The publication of real-time location information endangers the physical safety of the person concerned.
Justified ban or personal calculation?
A rather flimsy argument, as all the data published by @Elonjet is freely available on the website of the US Department of Transportation anyway. And the fact that even a link to @ElonJet results in a block seems absurd. Not all accounts that have ever retweeted @ElonJet have been banned from the platform. It seems as if the incidents are a welcome opportunity for Elon Musk to ban unwelcome critics from Twitter.
