Elon Musk just got rid of another Twitter feature after banning journalists

Elon Musk, who has been making a lot of noise about free speech over recent weeks, has been banning journalists on Twitter – many of whom write negatively about him.

Now, it appears that Twitter has binned a feature after it was used to ask Musk questions about the bans.

Twitter has suspended the accounts of inadependent journalist Aaron Rupar, CNN's Donie O’Sullivan, Mashable’s Matt Binder, Drew Harwell of The Washington Post and Ryan Mac of The New York Times – all of which have written about Musk in recent times.

Twitter's head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, told The Verge that bans are related to a new rule that bans "live location information, including information shared on Twitter directly or links to 3rd-party URL(s) of travel routes."

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Musk himself spoke as part of a live event on Twitter Spaces, which allows live audio conversations.

However, after taking a few questions about the bans from BuzzFeed News reporter Katie Notopoulos who organised the session, he left abruptly.

“Showing real-time information about someone’s location is inappropriate,” Musk said before leaving. “You dox, you get suspended, end of story.”

After the short exchange, Twitter Spaces itself has since appeared to be suspended.

Musk appears to have banned Twinner Spaces Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty images

Musk has also defended the suspension of prominent journalists, which started after Twitter’s new boss on Wednesday permanently banned the account ”ElonJet”, which tracked his private jets using publicly available data.

Twitter also changed its rules to prohibit the sharing of another person’s current location without their consent.

“Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation. This includes posting links to sites with real-time location info,” Musk said.

When questioned about the abrupt ban on the four journalists, the Tesla CEO responded saying: “Same doxxing rules apply to ‘journalists’ as to everyone else.”

Following strong pushback on the site, Musk said the accounts engaged in “doxxing” will be suspended temporarily for seven days.

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