Twitter to lift suspension on accounts that doxxed Elon Musk

Twitter chief executive officer Elon Musk announced on Saturday that the suspension on accounts that had doxxed his location would be lifted.

“The people have spoken. Accounts who doxxed my location will have their suspension lifted now,” he said.



Musk’s decision came after he hosted a Twitter poll asking Twiteratti if the suspension should be lifted.


Close to 60% of the respondents said the suspension should be lifted immediately instead of after seven days.

“You dox, you get suspended. End of story. That's it,” he said on a Twitter Space audio discussion late Thursday.

Doxxing is a shortened version of ‘dropping dox’ or documents. It is a malicious practice that involves gathering private or identifying information and releasing it online without the person's permission, usually in an attempt to harass, threaten, shame or exact revenge.

Musk had targeted journalists from The New York Times, CNN, Washington Post and other outlets after suspending a Twitter account, @elonjet, that tracked his private jet using publicly available data.

The new Twitter boss had previously said he would leave the tracking account alone to demonstrate his commitment to free speech.

Twitter updated its policy this week, saying it would remove any tweets or accounts that share someone’s live location, if it was not done to aid humanitarian efforts or during public events.

Several of the journalists whose accounts were suspended had written about the plane tracking Twitter account as well as Musk’s reasoning for the new policy, which followed his claims that a family member in Los Angeles had been stalked earlier in the week.