The United Nations is “deeply disturbed” by Twitter’s abrupt suspension of a group of US journalists, a spokesman has said, warning that the move sets a “dangerous precedent” as the EU said that the social media platform could fall foul of upcoming digital regulations. .
Stéphane Dujarric said Friday that the UN was “deeply disturbed” by the exclusion of prominent tech journalists from news organizations such as CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times who have written about Musk and the tech company he owns. .
Dujarric said the voices of the media should not be silenced on a platform that proclaimed itself a haven for freedom of expression. “The 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 switched on and off at whim and Downing Street also expressed concern about the suspensions.
The EU’s warning came from Věra Jourová, the European Commission’s vice-president for values and transparency, who tweeted that “the news about the arbitrary suspension of journalists on Twitter is worrying” and said that the Digital Services Act (DSA ) of the economic block required that the platforms respect the freedom of the media. Its provisions include the requirement that when users and content are penalized it must be done “in a diligent and proportionate manner, taking into account fundamental rights”.
“This is reinforced by our Freedom of Media Act. Elon Musk needs to be aware of this. There are red lines. And penalties, soon,” he said. Breaches of the DSA, which will come into effect for big tech companies next year, carry the threat of fines of up to 6% of global turnover or being temporarily suspended in extreme cases. The European Media Freedom Act, which also addresses the operation of technology platforms, is currently in draft form.
The UK Prime Minister’s official spokesman, Rishi Sunak, said that tech companies must “balance the protection of their users while maintaining freedom of expression”. The German government tweeted screenshots of the affected accounts and said it had a “problem” with the suspensions. Germany’s foreign office tweeted: “Press freedom cannot be turned on and off at will. Journalists below can no longer follow, comment or criticize us. We have a problem with that, @ Twitter.
Sunak’s spokesman added that the UK’s upcoming online safety bill would prevent big platforms like Twitter from suspending users if they had not breached the company’s terms of service, preventing “arbitrary” decisions about freedom of online expression.
However, Musk’s suspension from the tech journalists’ group on Thursday was for breaking a new user guideline about disclosing people’s locations, which had been created the day before.
It claimed they had broken the rule, which prohibits users from posting “live location information” that “reveals a person’s location, regardless of whether that information is publicly available.” Journalists had recently published stories about Musk’s suspension of a Twitter account that had shared publicly available data about his private jet’s movements. News articles that several journalists had published before their accounts were suspended did not include information about their real-time location or the location of any of their family members.
The Guardian has contacted Twitter for comment.
Campaign groups also condemned the suspensions. The Center for Countering Digital Hate said Musk “doesn’t understand the difference between the public interest and his own interests” and sought to oust journalists critical of him rather than address dangerous hate speech, while the ‘Open Rights Group urged 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 suspensions of reporters, with CNN saying the moves were “incredibly troubling” for anyone using the platform.
At a Twitter Spaces event held after the suspensions were announced, Musk was questioned about the bans by some of the journalists who had their accounts suspended. He said journalists were not being 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 completely deleted by Twitter, and the host’s connection was cut off in mid-sentence.
Meanwhile, as Musk’s team tried to avoid further discussion of his private jet’s movements, the bans have spiraled. First, Mastodon’s Twitter account was banned after posting a link to a mirror of ElonJet, the now-banned account at the center of the flurry of suspensions. Links to individual Mastodon users were blocked after sharing details of Musk’s private jet.
Links to entire Mastodon servers were then banned, starting with the larger versions of the “federated” social network, including Mastodon.social, and then spreading to smaller and smaller instances like infosec.exchange, to to cyber security 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.”