The United Nations is “very concerned” by Twitter’s sudden suspension of a group of US journalists, a spokesman said, warning the move set a “dangerous precedent” – as the EU said the social media platform could be at odds with upcoming digital regulations.
Stephane Dujarric said on Friday that the UN was “very concerned” by the banning of prominent technology reporters at news organizations including CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times who have written about Musk and the technology company he owns.
Dujarric said media voices should not be silenced on a platform that presents itself as a haven for free speech. “This move sets a dangerous precedent at a time when journalists around the world face censorship, physical threats and worse,” he told reporters.
The German government said press freedom should not be turned on and off on a whim, and Downing Street also expressed concern about the suspension.
The EU warning came from Vera Jourova, the European Commission’s vice-president for values and transparency, who tweeted that “the news of arbitrary removal of journalists on Twitter is worrying” and said that the Digital Services Act (DSA) of the economic block requires platforms to respect media freedom. Its provisions include a requirement that when users and content are punished, it must be in a “careful and proportionate manner, taking into account fundamental rights”.
“This is reinforced by our Freedom of the Media Act. Elon Musk must be aware of this. There are red lines. And sanctions soon,” she said. Violations of the DSA, which comes into force for major tech companies next year, carry the threat of fines of up to 6% of global turnover or suspension in extreme cases. The European law on media freedom, which also applies to the operation of technological platforms, is currently in draft form.
A spokesman for the UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, said tech companies had to “balance between protecting their users and maintaining freedom of speech”. The German government tweeted screenshots of the affected accounts and said there was a “problem” with the suspensions. The German Foreign Ministry tweeted: “Freedom of the press cannot be turned on and off on a whim. The journalists below can no longer follow, comment or criticize us. We have a problem with this @Twitter.”
The Sunak spokesman added that the UK’s upcoming online safety bill would ban major platforms such as Twitter from suspending users if they have not breached the company’s terms of service, thereby preventing “arbitrary” decisions about free speech online.
However, Musk’s suspension from the tech journalists group on Thursday was for violating a new user guideline for disclosing people’s location that was created the day before.
It claims they violated a rule that prohibits users from posting “live location information” that would “reveal an individual’s location, regardless of whether that information is publicly available.” Journalists had recently published articles about Musk’s suspension of Twitter, which shared publicly available data about the movements of his private jet. News articles that several reporters had published before their accounts were suspended did not include information about his real-time location or the location of any of his family members.
The Guardian has contacted Twitter for comment.
Campaign groups also condemned the shutdowns. The Center to Counter Digital Hate said Musk “doesn’t understand the difference between the public interest and his own interests” and seeks to oust journalists critical of him instead of tackling dangerous hate speech, while the Open Rights Group called on journalists to create accounts on rival platform Mastodon.
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First Amendment campaign group Pen America said that since Musk bought the business in October, he had treated Twitter “more like a personal fiefdom than a global public square.”
CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times criticized the suspension of journalists, with CNN saying the actions were of “incredible concern” for anyone who uses the platform.
In a Twitter Spaces event held after the suspensions were announced, Musk was questioned about the bans by some of the journalists whose accounts were suspended. He said journalists were not treated differently from other citizens. Using the term for sharing someone’s private personal information online without permission, he said: “If you doxx, you will be suspended. That’s it. End of story.” The space was then deleted from Twitter entirely, with the host disconnecting mid-sentence.
Meanwhile, as Musk’s team tried to prevent further discussion of his private jet’s movements, the bans fell apart. First, the Twitter account for Mastodon was banned after it posted a link to a mirror of ElonJet – the now-banned account at the center of the wave of suspensions. Links to individual Mastodon users were then blocked after they shared details of Musk’s private jet.
Links to entire Mastodon servers were then banned, starting with the largest versions of the “unified” social network, including Mastodon.social, and then spreading to include smaller and smaller instances such as infosec.exchange, for cybersecurity professionals, and journa.host , a media-only server.
A few hours later, Twitter began blocking users from adding their Mastodon usernames to their profiles. Users trying to post links to these sites received a warning that the link “has been identified by Twitter or our partners as potentially harmful.”
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