The IT Nerd

Today was the World Cup Final between France and Argentina. And I have to say it was the best World Cup Final, ever. But it’s also the time that Elon and his band of hangers on and lackeys decided to roll out a new policy. It is now forbidden for Twitter users to link to other social media sites. And the way it is worded is very interesting:

At both the Tweet level and the account level, we will remove any free promotion of prohibited 3rd-party social media platforms, such as linking out (i.e. using URLs) to any of the below platforms on Twitter, or providing your handle without a URL:

• Prohibited platforms:
  • Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Post and Nostr
  • 3rd-party social media link aggregators such as linktr.ee, lnk.bio
• Examples:
  • “follow me @username on Instagram”
  • “username@mastodon.social”
  • “check out my profile on Facebook – facebook.com/username”

Since I have my Mastodon handle in my profile, I checked to see if it was still there and it was. And my account hasn’t been suspended or deleted yet. Thus I have to assume that this isn’t being enforced yet. As for potential punishments, here’s what Elon and company have in mind:

Tweet deletion and temporary account locks

• If violations of this policy are an isolated incident or first offense, we may take a number of actions ranging from requiring deletion of one or more Tweets to temporarily locking account(s). Any subsequent offenses will result in permanent suspension.

Temporary suspension

• If violations of this policy are included in your bio and/or account name, we will temporarily suspend your account and require changes to your profile to no longer be in violation. Subsequent violations may result in permanent suspension.

This policy is stupid. More on that in a moment. Even Jack Dorsey who founded Twitter questions this policy:

Clearly Elon is so threatened by the number of people leaving Twitter for places like Mastodon that he’s come up with this as a means to make it as difficult as possible for people to leave and take their followers with them. Even for Elon, that’s a new low. And I suspect that this will accelerate the departure of users from Twitter. Because this policy is not only just bad, but it illustrates that Twitter is no longer a place that is worth spending your to visit. And that will add to all of Elon’s other problems. That on top of the fact that I have sneaking suspicion that some government someplace is going to take notice of this and start making Elon’s life even more miserable than it is now.

For the record, I have no plans on removing my Mastodon handle from my Twitter profile as it’s my way of saying “come at me Elon”. I recommend that nobody else remove their other social media handles from their profile either. Because I would love to see how far Elon is willing to go with this policy.

Late on Thursday, Elon Musk suspended the Twitter accounts of several journalists who covered him. And presumably he didn’t like something that they said or did. On Saturday, this happened:

In a tweet, Musk said he allowed the reporters to return due to the results of a poll, much like he did when reinstating the account of former President Trump. “The people have spoken. Accounts who doxxed my location will have their suspension lifted now,” he tweeted.

Musk, however, had faced a lot of pushback for suspending reporters who were writing about the controversy surrounding the @ElonJet account—and not actually sharing the billionaire’s real-time location in their tweets, as he claimed.

For now, the accounts of Ryan Mac (New York Times), Donie O’Sullivan (CNN), Drew Harwell (Washington Post), Micah Lee (The Intercept), Steve Herman (Voice of America), Matt Binder (Mashable), as well as freelancer writers Aaron Rupar and Tony Webster and commentator Keith Olbermann are back online. (Here’s Binder’s take) on the suspension.)

The @joinmastodon account is also back online, though one of its tweets has been flagged for violating Twitter’s rules.

And here’s Elon’s excuse for suspending them in the first place:

Twitter owner Elon Musk claims Mastodon and the journalists were suspended for breaking the platform’s rules against “doxxing,” or the act of publishing someone’s private, identifying information that could put them in harm’s way. 

“Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not,” he wrote(Opens in a new window). However, Musk says the suspensions will only last for seven days. 

In another tweet, Musk added: “Same doxxing rules apply to ‘journalists’ as to everyone else.”

He later alleged of the journalists: “They posted my exact real-time location, basically assassination coordinates, in (obvious) direct violation of Twitter terms of service.”

However, there doesn’t appear to be evidence that the journalists published Musk’s exact real-time location. In one case, suspended journalist Micah Lee tweeted(Opens in a new window) the Mastodon handle for the @ElonJet account while covering Twitter’s decision to suspend the Mastodon Twitter account.

Other screenshots of the last tweets from some of the journalists show them merely criticizing Musk or reporting on his claim that an alleged stalker followed a car carrying one of his children. It’s also important to note that the banned @ElonJet account usually posts only the takeoff and landing location of Musk’s jet using publicly available data.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what is going on here. If you’re critical of Elon, you’re going to get suspended from Twitter. And Elon is simply using the whole “doxxing” thing as cover. Or put another way, he’s trying to muzzle the press. From a guy who likes to toss around the words free speech, that’s completely unacceptable. Though to be fair those were just words as the only free speech that Elon cares about is when that speech is flattering towards him or one of his companies which was proven by this incident.

The thing is that unless Elon is punished for this, someone else will try the same thing. And then we are all in trouble. Deep trouble. This is why I feel three two need to happen:

• Elon needs to be held to account for this incident. And it looks like that is about to happen in the EU. And when it does, it will hurt because EU punishments tend to be very, very painful. But the same thing needs to happen in the US. I say that Elon needs to be hauled willing or not in front of a congressional hearing and made to explain his behaviour.
• Journalists and media outlets alike need to abandon Twitter. Now I get that part of the reason that journalists and media outlets are on Twitter is to amplify their stories by getting eyeballs on them so that it helps to pay the bills. But a free press and an Elon Musk led Twitter are not compatible with each other as evidenced by the events of the last few days. And since Elon shows no signs of changing course, departure is the only option.

By going doing the above, it will accelerate the inevitable death of Twitter. Because make no mistake, Twitter will die under Elon’s leadership. It’s just a question of when. I say that because advertisers who make up the overwhelming majority of Twitter’s ad revenue don’t like congressional investigations into the platforms that the advertise on. Nor do they like countries or federations of countries like the EU investigating and punishing platforms that they advertise on. And in the absence of compelling content such as journalism should journalists and media outlets leave en masse, there’s no incentive for the average person to visit Twitter. Giving advertisers no incentive to spend money on that platform. That leaves Elon with a bunch of Twitter Blue subscribers. And that’s not going to keep the lights on. Unless of course he sells more Tesla stock which he’s done twice in a matter of weeks. But even that will start to become painful after a while for Elon, if it isn’t already. Thus Twitter will die. And it will humiliate Elon because he failed in the public eye. The fact is that despite what he thinks of himself Elon isn’t the lord and master over social media. In fact he’s not the lord and master over anything really. And it’s time that the press, media outlets, and the rest of us start treating him as such by denying him what he needs most right now. Which is money. And then you can leave the EU and hopefully congress to do the rest.

Earlier today, I mentioned in a post that Elon Musk is having whatever staff is left at Twitter censor any Tweet that has links to Mastodon. This behaviour was called out by noted cybersecurity reporter Brian Krebs:

The thing is, it’s not just Mastodon. Other social media sites are getting this treatment:

The core reason why this is happening is that Elon doesn’t want Twitter users to have an easy off ramp to Mastodon or some other social media platform. And he’s doing this for the following reasons:

• Mastodon and sites like it are a threat to Elon because they take users away from Twitter.
• Less people on Twitter means that it’s a less appealing place for the few advertisers who still want to advertise on Twitter.
• Less advertisers on Twitter means less money for Elon.
• Less money for Elon means that he’s either got to fund Twitter out of his own pocket (which includes paying whatever he has to on $13 billion in loans that he secured to buy Twitter) or let Twitter die. Which if Twitter died, it would be a huge hit to his rather fragile ego.

In short, we’re seeing the desperation that I spoke of earlier this week increase. And if we see him start to block links to Facebook or Instagram, we’ll know that he’s in a very dark place trying anything to turn things around.

I have said it before and I will say it again. We are in the endgame. At this point, what we’re watching is to see how this all ends.

The headline that people are paying attention to is the fact that Elon Musk decided to suspend the Twitter accounts of a bunch of journalists last night. That has gotten the predictable blow back that you’d expect from such a dumb move, including from the EU. But that’s not the only thing that he did last night. Let’s walk through everything else that happened. Starting with a Spaces event that Elon Musk joined. And then abruptly left when questions about suspending the accounts of journalists started to be asked. Here’s a recording for your review:

Shortly after that, the Spaces feature was disabled. It’s not clear if Spaces is disabled forever or for now. But clearly this Spaces event was enough that Elon ordered someone to turn the feature off. Clearly Elon has very thin skin.

Next up is the fact that Mastodon started to trend on Twitter last night. And I believe that Elon tried to stop it from trending. I noted this in a few Tweets:

It did return to the top ten of my trending list only to disappear again. As in “poof” it was gone in the blink of an eye. While I have no proof that Elon did this. It seems likely that he did after 9to5Mac editor Chance Miller noted this:

Keep in mind that Mastodon is a confederation of servers that is largely not for profit. If Elon Musk is afraid of them, he must really be in trouble.

I really think when the history is written about what went on with Twitter after Elon Musk bought it, I think it will say that last night is the moment when Twitter started to really implode. Thus I would fully expect to see more crisis moments with Twitter and Elon in the coming days as the platform starts to die a slow death.

Last night, Elon Musk banned a number of journalists from Twitter. That of course set the Internet alight and sent people running to Mastodon. He did a whole lot more than that as well, but I will get to that in a separate story later today. But in that story, I said this:

Given the attention that this is getting, I believe that a number of things are likely to happen: 

• The EU will see this and make moves to make his life miserable. 
• Departures to Mastodon will accelerate. 
• I would not at all be surprised if Capitol Hill gives him a call and asks him to explain himself in front of a Congressional Hearing.

Well, the EU has chimed in and fired a warning shot across Elon’s bow:

Elon Musk’s decision to suddenly ban prominent tech journalists from Twitter is fanning a fierce backlash in Europe.

Germany warned of the impact on press freedom, while a senior EU official said Twitter must comply with the bloc’s rules or face possible sanctions. 

“Freedom of the press cannot be switched on and off as you please,” Germany’s foreign ministry tweeted on Friday. “As of today these journalists are no longer able to follow us, to comment or criticize. We have a problem with that @Twitter.”

Věra Jourová, the European Commission’s vice president for values and transparency, said the “arbitrary suspension” of journalists was “worrying,” and she indicated that the company could face penalties as a result.

“The EU’s Digital Services Act requires respect of media freedom and fundamental rights. This is reinforced under our #MediaFreedomAct,” Jourová said in a post on Twitter, adding that Musk “should be aware of that.” 

“There are red lines,” she continued. “And sanctions, soon.”

The EU doesn’t fool around with this sort of stuff. If they say they’re going to do something, they will do it. And it will hurt Elon because EU sanctions tend to be really painful. The thing is, he had to have known that something like this would have happened if he went about banning journalists on Twitter. Though, he has proven to be a “ready, fire, aim” sort of person who doesn’t think through the consequences of his actions before he does something. And it looks like that’s about to come back to bite him. Which means it really sucks to be Elon as it looks like he’s going to get slapped pretty hard.

I hope it was worth it Elon.

In a move that I guarantee is going to end badly for Elon Musk, multiple news outlets are reporting that Twitter has suspended the accounts of a number of journalists. From CNN:

Elon Musk’s Twitter banned Thursday the accounts of multiple journalists covering the technology industry without explanation.

Accounts belonging to CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, the New York Times’ Ryan Mac, and the Washington Post’s Drew Harwell and several other tech journalists were all abruptly suspended.

“Elon says he is a free speech champion and he is banning journalists for exercising free speech. I think that calls into question his commitment,” Harwell told CNN.

The account of progressive independent journalist Aaron Rupar was also banned. Rupar told CNN he has received no communication from Twitter about the ban. “Nothing,” he said in a phone call.

From NBC:

The accounts of Ryan Mac of The New York Times, Donie O’Sullivan of CNN, Drew Harwell of The Washington Post, Matt Binder of Mashable, Micah Lee of The Intercept, Steve Herman of Voice of America and independent journalists Aaron Rupar, Keith Olbermann and Tony Webster had all been suspended as of Thursday evening.

The Twitter account for Mastodon, a platform billed as an alternative, was also suspended early Thursday evening.

Musk indicated that the suspensions stemmed from the platform’s new rules banning private jet trackers, responding to a tweet from Mike Solana, vice president of venture capital firm Founders Fund, who noted that the suspended accounts had posted links to jet trackers on other websites.

“Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not,” he added in another tweet.

Finally from Reuters:

Twitter Inc on Thursday suspended the accounts of several journalists, including ones from the New York Times and the Washington Post, with the site showing “account suspended” notices for them.

Reuters could not immediately ascertain why those accounts were suspended. All the suspended reporters have in recent months written about Twitter’s owner, billionaire Elon Musk, and changes at the platform since he bought it.

Responding to a Tweet on the account suspensions, Musk tweeted: “Same doxxing rules apply to “journalists” as to everyone else,” a reference to Twitter rules banning sharing of personal information, called doxxing. 

He added: “Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not.”

The message here in my mind is clear. If you criticize Elon Musk, you will get suspended from Twitter. And he’s using the suspension of the account that tracks Elon’s jet as cover for what is basically an attempt to silence people. Which goes against his claims of being a free speech fanboy.

Given the attention that this is getting, I believe that a number of things are likely to happen:

• The EU will see this and make moves to make his life miserable.
• Departures to Mastodon will accelerate.
• I would not at all be surprised if Capitol Hill gives him a call and asks him to explain himself in front of a Congressional Hearing.

In terms of that second point, departures to Mastodon have begun:

The circled area is a spike in Mastodon account creations in the last hour which is around the time that this news broke. That’s the law of unintended consequences working against Elon. Stay tuned to see what happens in regards to the other two points.

At this point, it’s becoming clear that staying on Twitter is a non-starter. But clearly, if you stay on Twitter, you’re enabling Elon. While I have been cross posting to Twitter and Mastodon, I believe that my days on Twitter are over. I’ll make a separate announcement about that in the next day or so. But if I were you, I would make your plans to depart Twitter for greener pastures.