Twitter owner Elon Musk has been told by Downing Street that new laws will prevent him “arbitrarily” banning people from the social media platform in the UK.
Overnight the platform suspended the accounts of a series of journalists who had been writing about Musk.
It has also suspended an account which posts public information about the flight paths of Musk’s private jet.
The billionaire had previously described himself as a “free speech absolutist”.
Asked about the banning of journalists, Rishi Sunak’s spokesperson said: “We have been clear that - regardless of ownership - social media platforms must balance protecting their users while upholding free speech.
“That’s why under the Online Safety Bill, large platforms like Twitter, will be prohibited from suspending or banning users where this does not breach their terms of service or the law.
The prime minister’s spokesperson added: “That will be a massive improvement on the status quo, where platforms can arbitrarily and inconsistently make decisions pertaining to people’s freedom of speech online.”
Journalists from CNN, Mashable, The New York Times and The Washington Post had their accounts suspended after they wrote about the tracking of Musk’s private jet.
Musk - who bought the platform for $44bn in October - then joined a live broadcast which included some of these reporters.
He accused the journalists of “doxxing” him – an online term used for the publication of private information that could be used to identify a person’s location or address.
“As I’m sure everyone who’s been doxxed would agree, showing real-time information about somebody’s location is inappropriate, and I think everyone on this call would not like that to be done to them,” he said on the live call – hosted on Twitter’s Spaces service.
“There is not going to be any distinction in the future between journalists – so called journalists – and regular people.”
A short while later the Spaces service itself was suspended without any explanation from Twitter
