United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is “very disturbed” by Elon Musk’s suspension of journalists from Twitter and calls it a dangerous step, his spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said on Friday.
During a press briefing, Dujarric said, “We are very disturbed by the arbitrary suspension of accounts of journalists that we saw on Twitter.”
He said media voices should not be curbed on a platform that claims to be a space for freedom of speech. He said this move sets a dangerous precedent at a time when journalists all over the world are facing censorship, physical threats, and even worse.
Elon Musk-led Twitter suspended the accounts of several journalists on Thursday with the site showing “account suspended” notices for them.
Answering the question if the UN will consider its decision on involvement in Twitter, the UN spokesperson said, “We are monitoring day-by-day developments. Twitter by its very dominance of the market, remains an extremely important platform for us to share factual information.”
“We have also seen a very concerning rise on the platform of hate speech, disinformation on climate and other topics. So we are just following the situation closely,” he added.
Mike Solana, a Twitter user, in his tweet pointed out that the suspended accounts had posted links to jet trackers on other websites. Responding to Solana, Musk said “Same doxxing rules apply to “journalists” as to everyone else.”
Further in his response to Solana’s tweet, Musk wrote, “Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not.”
“They posted my exact real-time location, basically assassination coordinates, in (obvious) direct violation of Twitter terms of service,” Musk tweeted.
