Elon Musk suspends Twitter accounts of several high-profile journalists

Twitter suspended the accounts of several high-profile journalists without giving any explanation or reason on Thursday.

The microblogging site suspended the accounts of CNN's Donie O'Sullivan, The New York Times' Ryan Mac, The Washington Post's Drew Harwell, and other journalists.

All these journalists had written extensively about Elon Musk since his takeover of the platform. Their accounts were abruptly suspended on Thursday evening. The social media company has not issued a statement to clarify the situation.

The development came a day after Twitter suspended the accounts that track private jets, including the one owned by Elon Musk. Musk had earlier threatened to take action against these accounts, claiming that his son was being stalked by them.

The platform recently changed its policies on "doxxing," wherein an account indulges in sharing personal documents, such as the home address of a person.

Many such accounts were operated by 20-year-old Jack Sweeny, including @ElonJet.

It also suspended the account belonging to Mastodon, an emerging rival of the platform. Before its suspension, Mastodon had tweeted that people could follow @ElonJet on its platform. Several of the suspended accounts had shared the screenshots questioning Mastodon's suspension.

The other journalists whose Twitter accounts were suspended include Matt Binder of Mashable, Micah Lee of The Intercept, Steve Herman of Voice of America, and independent journalists Aaron Rupar, Keith Olbermann, and Tony Webster.

Musk later indicated that the suspended accounts had violated its new policies on "doxxing." The accounts had shared links related to jet trackers on other websites.

"Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not," he said in a tweet.

He said that the accounts banned on Thursday posted "my exact real-time location, basically assassination coordinates, in (obvious) direct violation of Twitter terms of service." He clarified that the suspensions will last seven days.

Musk bought Twitter in October this year. He closed the deal for Twitter with $13 billion in loans and a $33.5 billion equity commitment, per a report in CNN.

He has come under fire for the changes he has been introducing at the company. He scrapped the work-from-home policy, implemented longer working hours, and fired half of the company's 7,500 staff. He slammed Twitter's spending and work culture, stating that the company needs steep cost cuts.

Musk, too, is aware of the fact that he has managed to anger hundreds of people since his latest acquisition. He recently said that the risk of something bad happening to him or him getting shot is "quite significant."