EU Warns Elon Musk of Twitter Sanctions Over Journalist Suspensions

The European Union is threatening to sanction Twitter after Elon Musk abruptly suspended several journalists from the platform on Thursday night. 

“News about arbitrary suspension of journalists on Twitter is worrying,” tweeted(Opens in a new window) Věra Jourová, the EU’s vice president for values and transparency.

The suspensions could violate European law. In her tweet, Jourová pointed out that the EU’s Digital Services Act and Media Freedom Act(Opens in a new window) are designed to protect freedom of speech and media independence. “@ElonMusk should be aware of that. There are red lines. And sanctions, soon.”

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Germany’s foreign ministry also weighed in on the suspensions. “Freedom of the press cannot be switched on and off as you will. As of today, the journalists below can no longer follow, comment or criticize us. So we have a problem @Twitter,” the agency wrote(Opens in a new window) on Twitter.

The warnings are ironic since Musk acquired Twitter ostensibly to protect free speech on the platform. And the threat of regulation comes when the EU has already been demanding that Musk follow European requirements on social media platforms.

Last month, European Union Commissioner Thierry Breton listed the various ways Twitter will need to regulate itself in order to comply with EU rules. This includes investing in content moderation—which Musk has worked to scale back since taking over the company—while also ensuring freedom of speech. 

However, Musk says the suspensions against the journalists will be temporary, potentially lasting only seven days. He shut down the accounts, he says, because the journalists were “doxxing” his real-time location by linking or posting screenshots of @ElonJet, a service that aggregated publicly available information to track the take-off and landing locations of Musk’s personal jet.

The day before, Musk permanently suspended the @ElonJet account, even though he previously said he wouldn’t in order to protect free speech. He’s since changed his mind, claiming a stalker had followed a car carrying one of his children, and put in place a ban on sharing people’s real-time location info via Twitter.

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Still, the journalists point out they never shared Musk’s real-time location. Instead, they merely posted links to @ElonJet accounts on other platforms while covering Twitter’s sudden decision to suspend rival social network Mastodon from sharing those links.

But in a live chat(Opens in a new window) on Twitter Spaces on Thursday, Musk seemed to maintain that sharing a link to alternative @ElonJet accounts amounted to doxxing. “You doxx, you get suspended, end of story,” Musk said. You can listen to his brief appearance in the clip below:

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That Spaces, meanwhile, was notable because two of the suspended journalists—Drew Harwell of The Washington Post and Matt Binder of Mashable—as well as the owner of @ElonJet, were able to participate in the live chat. That was apparently a glitch, and as of this morning, Twitter has shut down the option to start a Spaces chat, TechCrunch notes(Opens in a new window).