Where were you in the Great Twitter Journalist Expulsion? It depends on which one you mean. Last night, I was at church when Elon Musk started suspending accounts that tweeted real-time information about the location of his private jet. Twenty-six months ago, I lived in Minnesota when previous Twitter ownership suspended an entire newspaper, the New York Post, for tweeting out its own stories on Hunter Biden’s laptop, along with everyone else who insisted on sharing the link on the platform. Facebook immediately followed suit:

You 'member: pic.twitter.com/KQf285QFcR

— Original Pechanga (@opechanga) December 16, 2022

That suspension lasted over a week, a point to which we’ll return in a moment. What did other media outlets do at the time? Did they protest, claim that the suspension was an attack on democracy, and demand their reinstatement — as the Washington Post, among others, does now? Not exactly. The WaPo’s editorial board cheered censorship at the time when it applied to their political opponents rather than their allies:

Last week, Facebook reduced the distribution of a dubious story by the New York Post that smeared Democratic nominee Joe Biden, pending third-party fact-checking. Twitter blocked the URL from being shared altogether. Both platforms made the correct decision to slow what so far seem to be baseless accusations backed up by leaked emails of murky origin — yet the way the sites made that decision matters, too. The confusing and opaque process that accompanied the positive outcome threatens to render pyrrhic any victory over the forces of misinformation and meddling.

Well, Twitter did a little more than that at the time. Twitter locked the NY Post out of their account on October 14th for tweeting out the story, and eight days later, they still couldn’t use the platform. At the same time, both Twitter and Facebook were taking no action against China’s official foreign-ministry propagandist spreading actual “disinformation” on their platforms:

A week later, the NY Post’s account is still locked — even though the Bidens have never directly disputed the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s e-mail. It’s still locked even though the Post now reports independent corroboration from one of the e-mail addressees. This, we have been told, is to protect us from election-season misinformation.

But now for the good news — not everyone’s account has been locked! Thanks to the Twitter demi-gods, we can still get our steady diet of the View From Beijing, thanks to Lijian Zhao, a propagandist known enough to Twitter to have a “fact check” imposed on him in May.

Not only did the mainstream-media clique on social media fail to defend the NY Post: to the extent they reacted at all, they largely cheered it. They also cheered when Twitter locked out people who dissented from their favored narratives, especially on gender theory and pandemic policies such as lockdowns and mask and vaccine mandates. Journalists on Twitter amplified the notion that dissent amounted to a “threat” to safety. They have spent the entire Musk era at Twitter demanding more censorship, not less, and especially more suppression based on viewpoint while tossing around nonsense terms like “stochastic terrorism.”

And now we’re supposed to rush to their defense because a handful of journalists ignored a warning from Musk about re-propagating real-time location info on himself and his family on his own platform and got suspended? Puh-leeze.

I may not entirely agree with the policy, but I’m not exactly seeing this as the End of the World As We Know It, either. Especially given the tenor of reporting lately about criticism of public officials, in which it’s equated with threats to safety:

According to @cnn, a threat to safety occurs when you criticize someone they like, but not when you publish real-time assassination coordinates of someone they don’t. pic.twitter.com/OaxZ3NrLmA

— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) December 15, 2022

Of course, the MSM, which supports censorship in the name of “harm reduction” when their favored policies are criticized, sees no issue when actual physical safety is involved.

— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) December 15, 2022

I keep asking them to be free speech warriors and give me their locations to put on Twitter, but they won’t. pic.twitter.com/wXOTrvUJv4

— The Redheaded libertarian (@TRHLofficial) December 16, 2022

Musk made a similar point overnight:

If anyone posted real-time locations & addresses of NYT reporters, FBI would be investigating, there’d be hearings on Capitol Hill & Biden would give speeches about end of democracy!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 16, 2022

After John finished his analysis last night, Musk did elaborate on the scope of the suspensions:

Accounts engaged in doxxing receive a temporary 7 day suspension

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 16, 2022

That’s actually slightly less than the suspension dropped on the New York Post, and much less than the suspensions and suppression applied to lesser accounts that dissented from the progressive narratives. (It also appears to have been an ad-hoc policy, which is part of the problem I’ll discuss at the end.) Musk apparently is even willing to be democratic about it, albeit after refining the first poll down to two options — sort of like a Georgia run-off:

Unsuspend accounts who doxxed my exact location in real-time

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 16, 2022

Immediate reversal is leading so far, 59/41, with over two million votes cast thus far. The poll will be open until 10 pm ET or thereabouts, so everyone has plenty of time to cast their ballot. Musk has proven quite responsive to his own Twitter polls, and it’s likely that he’d reinstate the journalists by tomorrow morning if this lead holds up, assuming that they want to come back.

As for Musk’s actions, there is plenty to criticize. If I had spent $44 billion on Twitter on the promise of freeing up speech, I don’t think I’d have started that off by silencing a bunch of reporters — especially since media outlets provide a significant part of the incentive for other users to stick around. As John said, there’s a certain level of chaos and knee-jerkedness taking place in this kerfuffle that undermines confidence in Musk’s commitment to free speech and debate.

Of course, I didn’t spend $44 billion to buy Twitter either. It’s Musk’s platform, and he can do what he wants with it. And I get the gut impulse to punish people after an incident such as Musk’s son experienced; it’s totally understandable. It doesn’t make it particularly principled, though, or good business sense after dropping $44 billion to buy this platform. If he expects people to stick around and get his investment to pay off, he needs a much more predictable set of rules and actions in place so everyone can understand the environment and operate responsibly in it.

In this latest eruption, though, there are few principled players. It’s about personal victimhood on all sides, not actual values. When all sides begin living by the principles of free speech and debate even when it cuts against their own personal and professional interests, let me know. Until then, this is mainly a fight between a couple of spoiled, privileged cliques wrapping themselves in the First Amendment when it suits them and denying it to others on the same basis. The only rational response to that is … to pass the popcorn.