A reporter who ended online speculation that Tesla and X CEO Elon Musk was posing as an ardent fan has reportedly been temporarily banned from the social media site, and links to her story have been restricted.
In one of the the latest dramas surrounding Musk, suspicions arose that a poster on X named Adrian Dittman, who sounds like Musk and regularly defends him, might have been the South African-born billionaire himself, using a so-called “sock-puppet” account.
However, Jacqueline Sweet, a reporter at the Spectator, determined that Dittman is actually a real person living in Fiji.
Sweet published her findings, but Musk seemed to contradict them by posting on X that “I am Adrian Dittman.”
“It’s time the world knew.”
Left by itself, it looks like Musk was just having some fun and playing along with the drama. But despite his projected indifference, it appears the X boss was unhappy with Sweet’s reporting.
At some point after he became aware of the story, Musk’s X reportedly banned Sweet’s account for a month — allegedly for “doxing,” according to Sweet — and she claims that links to the Spectator article about Dittman have been restricted across the site.
Sweet provided a statement to The Independent saying: “I am disappointed that X is censoring the story and has frozen my account, because our reporting was newsworthy, balanced, researched and careful to not expose anyone’s personal information such as social media handles or addresses. Anonoymous accounts are often written about if they are newsworthy and the story is in the public interest, and with Musk and the Adrian Dittmann account heavily involved in American politics, this reporting was fair and not ‘doxing’ as X’s terms define it. As a journalist, using X is important to my work so I am hopeful Musk will return to his free speech ideals and stop censoring me, and the story.”
Her post about Dittman and Musk had amassed 1.5 million views when it was taken down.
When he bought Twitter, he insisted he was buying the site due to issues with free speech and transparency. Despite calling himself a “free speech absolutist,” Musk has been accused of banning or restricting accounts he personally takes issue with in the past.
It appears Musk’s response to the article may be borne of those same tendencies. When an X user attempts to click on Sweet’s article, a message pops up warning readers “this link may be unsafe.”
The warning continues: “The link you are trying to access has been identified by X or our partners as being potentially spammy or unsafe, in accordance with X’s URL Policy.”
The message lists the categories that a link might fall into to generate such a warning, including “spammy links that mislead people or disrupt their experience.”
A big blue button under the message will navigate users away from the Spectator article, while the only option for continuing is by clicking a tiny blue hyperlink attached to the word “continue.”
Critics have accused Musk ofcensoring Sweet’s reporting. Andrew Kerr, an investigative reporter for the Free Beacon, tweeted: “Don’t say anything bad about Elon it’s against the rules.”
The Independent has contacted X for comment,
