Mastodon Accounts with many journalists got suspended by Twitter
Mastodon, an open-source rival of Twitter, was reportedly removed from the service on Thursday afternoon. According to archives, just before it was suspended, Mastodon (@joinmastodon) tweeted a link to the jet tracking account on its own service.
Many links to Mastodon have stopped working as of 6:30 PM Pacific Time on Twitter, which has labeled them “possibly dangerous.” In our testing, tweeted URLs to some servers without Mastodon in the domain appeared to still function. mstdn. social and mastodon. social has been blocked; however, links to journa. host and other sites continue to function.
As the Twitter alternative Mastodon gained popularity, many users on Twitter included a link to their Mastodon profile in their bios. The warning “Warning: this link may be hazardous” is now displayed next to any links to prohibited Mastodon servers.
👽 @joinmastodon official account has been banned on Twitter pic.twitter.com/qOSe7nRj2W
— Alex Barredo 📉 (@somospostpc) December 15, 2022
Since the company’s hands-on new owner took aboard, Musk’s personal and political inclinations have influenced several Twitter policy decisions. Musk first said that Twitter would permit any lawful speech, but he has since banned several accounts for personal reasons.
One person cannot impose restrictions on the entire Mastodon network, an open-source, federated Twitter alternative. Users can leave a server and join another if they disagree with the decisions being made by the administrators of Mastodon’s servers, which are independent yet open instances of the social network.
Twitter bans writers about Musk and announces a 7-day penalty for “doxxing.”
As Elon Musk, the company’s new owner, tweeted that the same rule would be applicable for journalists against releasing personal information, Twitter on Thursday suspended the accounts of numerous well-known journalists who had lately written about him.
Musk has referred to himself as an ardent supporter of free speech. In response to a Tweet about the account suspensions, he tweeted, “Same doxxing rules apply to ‘journalists’ as to everyone else,” referring to Twitter policies that prohibit sharing private information, also known as doxxing.
Musk’s statement referred to Twitter’s banning on Wednesday of the @elonjet account, which used open-source data to track his private jet in real time.
Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 16, 2022
That was unknown if every journalist whose accounts were suspended had shared or commented on news about @elonjet.
Musk posted a poll requesting Twitter users to vote on when to restore the doxxed accounts after tweeting on Thursday that there would be a seven-day suspension for doxxing.
Accounts engaged in doxxing receive a temporary 7 day suspension
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 16, 2022
When the poll’s results indicated that 43% of voters preferred reinstating the accounts “immediately,” the highest percentage of any option, he said that he had provided too many choices and would rerun the poll.
A request for comment from Twitter did not immediately receive a response.
