On December 15, Twitter suspended accounts of several prominent journalists who allegedly violated the social media platform's rules. The suspended accounts included those of Ryan Mac of The New York Times; Drew Harwell of The Washington Post; Aaron Rupar, an independent journalist; Donie O’Sullivan of CNN; Matt Binder of Mashable; Tony Webster, an independent journalist; Micah Lee of The Intercept and political journalist Keith Olbermann, according to reports. While initially, no reason was given for the suspension, Elon Musk stated in a Twitter Spaces discussion, "You dox, you get suspended. End of story. That's it."
Did the journalists doxx the billionaire? Today's FAQ will delve into this a bit more.
What is doxxing?
Doxxing literally means "dropping documents" or making private information public. This private information could refer to one's personal details such as contact details, house address, financial information and so on. Twitter's rules regarding doxxing were updated this week in its privacy policy. A report by The Indian Express stated that doxxing on Twitter could include revealing information related to home address or physical location information, live location information, including information shared on Twitter directly or links to third-party URL(s) of travel routes, actual physical location or other identifying information that would reveal a person’s location, Identity documents, including government-issued IDs and so on.
Is doxxing a new phenomenon?
Not really. Doxxing was common in the sphere of hacking in the 1990s, according to reports. The most cited instance of doxxing outside of the hacker communities was the website of Nuremberg Files. The website which has been taken down now, listed roughly 200, as the website called them, “abortionists.” It also included the abortion providers’ personal information, such as their home addresses, phone numbers and photograph, as stated in a report by The Slate. Among other things, the website "celebrated providers’ deaths and, with a wink and a nod, encouraged others to harm the remaining providers on the list so that more names could be crossed off," the report stated.
Did the suspended accounts doxx Elon Musk?
The suspension of the journalists' Twitter accounts came after the suspension of the Twitter handle @ElonJet, an account run by 20-year-old university student Jack Sweeney, who would track the movements of Musk’s private jet using publicly available data, as per a report by The Indian Express. Several of these journalists had written articles about the aforementioned incident as well as the policy reasoning behind it. Surprisingly, Musk had earlier said that he would allow the account to function because of his "commitment to free speech."
What has been the public reaction to this new policy?
Netizens took to Twitter to raise questions about this new policy. "Recently I reported an account for sharing my full name, my job and the salary I received there. I didn’t so much as get an email back regarding that report. The tweet remains up and the account remains unpunished. But please do go on about zero tolerance for doxxing won’t you?" a user on Twitter ( @JoJoFromJerz) said.
"A crazy thing about the clumsy lie that Musk banned journalists for "doxxing": It's been credibly reported that one of Musk's plans to jazz Twitter ad revenue is to require all users to share their real-time locations with Twitter advertisers. Privacy for him, not for you," another user on Twitter (@davidfrum) said.
