Elon Musk commented on this week’s controversy after the social media company suspended the accounts of several journalists who shared information pertaining to the location of the billionaires whereabouts, saying that the media, “thinks they’re better than everyone else.”
Entrepreneur David Sacks conducted a Twitter poll asking, “should real-time doxxing be allowed on Twitter,” whether temporary account suspensions are a “reasonable” way to handle violations and whether corporate journalists should be required to adhere to the same rules as any other user.
He later commented on the poll results, writing, “Interesting that the strongest result is for treating the corporate media the same as everyone else. I suspect this is why they’re acting so hysterically right now.”
“They think they’re better than everyone else,” Musk wrote back.
Following his comment, the billionaire clarified his earlier statement, saying, “Not all journalists are bad, but far too many are.”
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The comments come after the Twitter CEO went on a suspension spree on Thursday. Reporters with The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Voice of America and other independent news agencies saw their accounts go dark.
Musk tweeted late Friday that the company would lift the suspensions following the results of a public poll on his account.
The CEO has previously used Twitter polls to reinstate Donald Trump’s account, reversing a ban that kept the former president off the site.
The poll showed 58.7% of participants favored a move to immediately unsuspend accounts with 41.3% of voters who said the suspensions should be lifted in seven days.
The drama kicked off after Musk accused a university student who has been tracking the movement of Musk’s private jet, of being responsible for an alleged encounter between his infant son and a stalker.
The company has not explained why the accounts were taken down. But Musk took to Twitter on Thursday night to call out journalists who were sharing private information about his whereabouts, which he described as “basically assassination coordinates.”
Earlier on Thursday, Musk defended the decision to ban several reporters from the platform, tweeting, “Same doxxing rules apply to ‘journalists’ as to everyone else.”