Elon Musk Bans Twitter Account of Taylor Lorenz of Washington Post
Washington Post tech columnist Taylor Lorenz said her Twitter account was suspended Saturday after she tweeted a request for comment at Elon Musk, the tech mogul who is the social network’s new owner, on a story she was working on.
Lorenz’s Twitter account (@TaylorLorenz), which she activated in 2010, had more than 340,000 followers before it was suspended. “Earlier tonight, Elon Musk suspended my Twitter account,” she wrote on her Substack. “I received zero communication from the company on why I was suspended or what terms I violated.”
“Super crazy. Elon seems to banning anyone who disagrees with him,” Lorenz said in a TikTok video she shared Saturday evening. Lorenz had been tweeting from an alternate Twitter account, @nodreamsoflabor, before that was also banned.
Musk has not publicly commented on Twitter’s suspension of Lorenz. There was no response to a request for comment Variety emailed to Twitter’s PR mailbox.
Twitter’s ban of Lorenz, who has regularly reported on Twitter and Musk, comes after the mega-billionaire suspended the Twitter accounts of several journalists Thursday — alleging they had “doxxed” him, after some (but not all) had posted links to an account that tracked his private jet — before reinstating several of them on Friday night.
The disabling of Lorenz’s account, without any evident explanation, makes it appear that Musk, who has called himself a “free speech absolutist,” is now waging a campaign to keep information and commentary critical of him off the platform he bought for $44 billion.
In the Substack post, Lorenz said there were only three tweets live on her Twitter account when it was banned: two that promoted her profiles on TikTok and Instagram, and a third asking Musk for comment on a story involving Musk that she and WaPo colleague Drew Harwell (whose account was banned and then unbanned) have been working on.
Lorenz did not provided details about what the story was about. Her tweet at Musk said in part, “We’ve learned some information that we’d like to share and discuss with you.”
At least two journalists Twitter banned and then unbanned this week, Aaron Rupar and Tony Webster, denied they posted any information that could be construed as “doxxing,” which refers to sharing someone’s private information online without their permission. “This is not the free speech we were promised,” Webster tweeted Friday night. “To be clear, there was no ‘doxing’ — even if an impulsive, accountable-to-nobody oligarch said so.”
Twitter is requiring some of the journalists it suspended to delete tweets that were deemed to violate Musk’s brand-new policy prohibiting sharing real-time location information (“regardless if this information is publicly available”). Podcaster and political commentator Keith Olbermann on Saturday posted from his…
Read More: Elon Musk Bans Twitter Account of Taylor Lorenz of Washington Post