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The Twitter accounts of a number of journalists and rival social media site Mastodon have been suspended without notice on Dec. 16 (Singapore time).

Those suspended included a number of technology journalists and public commentators.

According to Axios, these included:

• Aaron Rupar, an independent journalist who has written for Vox.
• Ryan Mac, tech reporter for the New York Times.
• Drew Harwell, Washington Post tech reporter.
• Donie O'Sullivan, CNN politics and tech correspondent.
• Matt Binder, tech reporter for Mashable.
• Keith Olbermann, sports and politics commentator.

Twitter has also suspended the official account of Mastodon, another social media website.

The notice on all the suspended accounts indicates that they were suspended for supposedly "violating" Twitter rules.

Most of those suspended appear to be linked to another story involving Twitter owner Elon Musk.

@ElonJet flight tracker

Twitter recently suspended an account named @ElonJet, which tracks Musk's private jet using publicly-available information.

Back in January 2022, Protocol reported that Musk had offered the creator of the account, Jack Sweeney, US$5,000 (S$6,800) to delete his account.

Musk supposedly claimed that he didn't want "crazy people" tracking his location.

@ElonJet was just one of the many automated accounts Sweeney created that tracks when a private jet takes off and when it lands, others include those tracking the jets of Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates.

While Sweeney was receptive to the offer if the billionaire made it US$50,000, Musk eventually decided against paying and "ghosted" Sweeney.

In early November 2022, after Musk acquired the company, he referred to Sweeney again, saying he would not ban the account.

On Dec. 14, 2022, the account was banned, CNBC reported.

Sweeney's personal Twitter account was also banned.

Stalker incident

Sky News reported on Dec. 14 that a stalker had allegedly accosted a car carrying Musk's young son, and climbed on the hood.

Musk then vowed to take legal action against Sweeney and organisations who "supported harm" against his family.

"Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation," Musk tweeted.

However, it was not immediately apparent if the stalker had any connection to the @ElonJet account.

Sky News also said it was unclear what legal action Musk could take against accounts that used publicly-available information.

Seven-day suspension

On Dec. 16, Musk claimed that the journalists were suspended because they posted his "exact real-time location" and described it as "basically assassination coordinates" and a violation of Twitter's terms of service.

However, Axios reported that they had been covering the story and allegedly included links to the @ElonJet tracker account, apparently enough to trigger a suspension.

According to Rupar, writing on his Substack platform, he had tweeted that the account was banned but was still active on Facebook, with a link.

He said he was given no warning before the ban was imposed.

Musk further indicated that the accounts would be suspended for seven days.

The Washington Post reported that Musk joined a chat and tried to explain the suspension:

"Around 11:30 p.m. Thursday, Musk joined a Twitter Spaces chat — essentially a public conference call — with several journalists, including some who had been banned and reiterated his claim that they had “doxxed” him.

The journalists challenged him on this.

“You’re suggesting that we’re sharing your address, which is not true,” said Harwell.

Musk retorted, “You posted a link to the address.”

Harwell replied, “In the course of reporting on @elonjet, we posted a link to @elonjet, which is now not online.

Musk left the call abruptly about four minutes into it."

Top image from Tesla YouTube.