It’s been a week and the journalists who were unceremoniously kicked off of Twitter, then unceremoniously reinstated, then unceremoniously locked out once again, are still not back on Twitter.
As Mashable previously reported, Elon Musk banned several high-profile journalists for ostensibly violating Twitter’s doxxing policy on Dec. 15 despite most of them not actually violating Twitter’s doxxing policy. They had their accounts reinstated on Dec, 17, but their restored accounts weren’t completely restored. And even the suspensions were confusing. When Mashable’s Matt Binder’s account was first suspended, no one could see his tweets but he could see tweets from people he followed — the read-only mode for suspended users. Now, though, anyone can see his profile and tweets, but he can’t see anything.
The reinstatement of journalists on Twitter appears to be conditional and incomplete
All of the suspended users were told they had to delete some tweets in order to regain access to the ability to actually tweet — and some have now done so. Binder, however, was initially let loose with no strings attached, but when he asked Twitter why he was suspended, his account was locked and he was told he had to delete a tweet that apparently broke some rules. The tweet goes like this: “remember Elon Musk’s first Twitter Files? the one about Twitter blocking links to NY Post’s Hunter Biden story Elon Musk is using the same thing to block links to @ElonJet on other platforms right now the exact same thing (except old Twitter stopped doing it the very same day).”
His tweet did not include any links to any other social media platform for ElonJet. It appears the reason they want the tweet taken down is because you can see the ElonJet Instagram handle in the screenshot he attached to the tweet. Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Mashable.
Originally, Binder wasn’t going to delete the tweet, because it’s unclear what kind of rules were even broken. He appealed Twitter’s decision, but lost the appeal. In the denial, where it points to a policy Binder broke, the policy is blank. There was nothing there.
Twitter wants Binder to delete the tweet — but the platform removed it already. Instead of the tweet, you just see a message saying it removed a tweet that broke policy. It appears that Twitter simply wants Binder to press a button taking responsibility for tweeting something inappropriate — but it is so unclear as to why that tweet was inappropriate in the first place.
