Elon Musk has lifted Twitter’s ban on a group of journalists he said were putting his family’s safety at risk.
He reinstated their accounts after being warned he could face EU sanctions and after asking Chirping users what it should do.
Nearly 3.7 million people voted and 58.7% said they should reverse the ban immediately, rather than in a week’s time.
“People have spoken. Accounts that have doxxed my location will see their suspension lifted now,” he tweeted.
Accounts frozen this week included reporters from CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Moss suggested they were banned for tweeting about @ElonJet, an account that tracked his private plane.
That bill was also suspended for breaking a new Twitter rule about revealing someone’s real-time location.
The Twitter owner said it was taking legal action against the student who manages the @ElonJet account after claiming a “crazy stalker” had attacked a car carrying his son.
Musk said people who shared his position were basically providing “coordinates of the assassination.”
However, his ban on journalists has sparked criticism and concerns about free speech.
An EU official warned that there were “red lines” and that the Twitter owner could be fined.
The German Foreign Ministry tweeted: “Journalists below can no longer follow, comment and criticize us. We have a problem with that, @Twitter.”
A spokesman for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak did not criticize Musk directly, but said that “regardless of who owns it, social media platforms need to balance protecting their users by supporting freedom of speech.”
Musk’s brief tenure as owner of Twitter was a turbulent one, with major advertisers leaving the platform over concerns about its future direction and controversy over the company’s mass layoffs.
The billionaire insists he will improve Twitter, ridding it of fake accounts and improving free speech.
