Elon Musk has written a tweet in which he states that he is once again allowing journalists who had their Twitter accounts suspended to be able to use it. In his message, ironically, he comes to say "so inspiring to see the new love and freedom of expression on the part of the press."
The owner of the social network this week suspended the use of Twitter by several journalists from the US media, such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN or Voice of America, who cover the tycoon's information, on the grounds that They used an application that offered their location in real time, which could cause security problems.
Following this suspension, the vice-president of the European Commission for Values and Transparency, Vera Jourová, threatened to sanction Twitter after several US media outlets reported yesterday that the company had suspended the accounts of several of its professionals.
Criticism for said suspension came from the German government to Reporters Without Borders. Specifically, the German Foreign Ministry stated on its Twitter account that "press freedom should not be turned off and on at will" and stated that some journalists "can no longer follow as of today" the Ministry's own account. "They can no longer follow us, comment or criticize us, so we have a problem," he said before adding a series of images showing the suspended accounts of these journalists.
Similarly, Reporters Without Borders criticized that "Elon Musk's way of managing Twitter is a disaster for the right to information" and the decision to block several journalists' accounts proves the risk that the "arbitrary" management of large platforms of the internet means for democracy.
This organization maintained that "the arbitrary way of leading online platforms poses a great threat to democracy", which called for the immediate restitution of restricted profiles. For the RSF secretary general, Christophe Deloire, what is happening with the social network is a "Kafkaesque nightmare", which is why it is necessary to "regain democratic control" over this type of platform, "before they completely subjugate the democracies to their whims".
The organization for the defense of press freedom also pointed out that the blocked accounts corresponded to journalists who had not shared the real-time location of the billionaire of South African origin - the reason Musk alleged to justify the suspension of the profiles - but rather that informed precisely this new policy.
