On Thursday Twitter suspended the accounts of several prominent journalists who recently wrote about its new owner Elon Musk, with the billionaire tweeting that rules banning the publishing of personal information applied to all, including journalists.

Responding to a Tweet on the account suspensions, Musk, who has portrayed himself as a free speech absolutist, tweeted: "Same doxxing rules apply to 'journalists' as to everyone else," a reference to Twitter rules banning the sharing of personal information, called doxxing.

According to Deccan Chronicle, "Musk's tweet referred to Twitter's Wednesday suspension of @elonjet, an account tracking his private jet in real time using data available in the public domain. Musk had threatened legal action against the account's operator, saying his son had been mistakenly followed by a "crazy stalker".

It was unclear if all the journalists whose accounts were suspended had commented on or shared news about @elonjet."

Reuters said, "The suspensions echo chaotic actions at Twitter since Musk took over, including rapid firings of top management and thousands of employees, seesawing on how much to charge for Twitter's subscription service Twitter Blue, and reinstating banned accounts, including that of former President Donald Trump.

Twitter now leans heavily on automation to moderate content, doing away with certain manual reviews and favoring restrictions on distribution rather than removing certain speech outright, its new head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, told Reuters this month."

They also said, "Among the journalist accounts suspended on Thursday was that of Washington Post reporter Drew Harwell (@drewharwell), who wrote on social media platform Mastodon that he had recently written about Musk and posted links to "publicly available, legally acquired data."

Twitter also suspended the official account of Mastodon (@joinmastodon), which has emerged as an alternative to Twitter. Mastodon could not immediately be reached for comment."

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