Twitter rehabilitates the accounts of journalists suspended for the ElonJet case

Twitter started to remove suspension inflict on the account of some US journalists they had tweeted about ElonJet, the account that tracked Elon Musk’s private jet flights in real time by crossing flight data from the FAA and ADS-B Exchange. The decision, announced by the company’s CEO himself, comes as a result of the public poll held 24 hours ago: 58.7% (out of about 3.7 million votes) requested that the accounts be “unlocked”.

The accounts of reporters Donie O’Sullivan of CNN, Ryan Mac of the New York Times, Matt Binder of Mashable and Drew Harwell of the Washington Post are back visible, as well as that of Mastodon, while at the momentElonJet is still suspended: Musk had offered to unban him if he agreed to publish delayed flight data no longer in real time.

The journalists were found guilty of having linked ElonJet accounts on other social platformswhat in contrast to a recent Twitter policy update therefore we prohibit the sharing of real-time location information, including that shared directly on Twitter or through links to third-party URLs. “We don’t make exceptions to this policy for journalists or other accounts,” commented the social media’s head of trust and security, Ella Irwin.

The suspensions had aroused great uproar also at the political level, even in Europe. “The reports of the arbitrary suspension of journalists on Twitter are worrying. The EU Digital Services Act requires respect for media freedom and fundamental rights. This is reinforced by our Media Freedom Act. Elon Musk should be aware of this. There are red lines. And sanctions, soon“, commented Vera Jourova, Vice-President for Values ​​and Transparency of the European Commission in the past few hours.