Elon Musk Flees Call After Grilling by Journalists: 'Think Elon Has Left'

After suspending the accounts of several journalists on Twitter, Elon Musk reportedly fled a Twitter Spaces conference chat hosted by Buzzfeed's Kate Notopoulos where reporters were questioning him about his controversial move.

In a recording of the chat, which has since widely been shared on Twitter and others, journalists can be heard challenging Musk about the legitimacy of his decision to suspend the accounts of journalists reporting on the jet tracking accounts which followed the millionaire's movements across the world, among others.

While journalists insisted that reporting on Musk's jet movements isn't the same as posting his personal address and it's in the public interest, the Twitter chief reiterated that for him that was "doxxing."

"Doxxing" indicates the disclosure of someone's personal data—including identity, address and others—online.

"It's not more acceptable for you than it is for me," Musk told Washington Post's Drew Harwell—one of the journalists whose Twitter accounts have been suspended. Harwell, who shared reporting on Musk's jet movements when writing about the Twitter account "ElonJet," accused the billionaire of doing something similar when he shared a 2020 New York Post's article on Hunter Biden.

"There is not special treatment for journalists," Musk responded. "You dox, you get suspended, end of story," he said.

Host Notopoulos then can be heard asking another question before realizing that Musk has left the conference chat. "Oh. I think Elon has left," she said.

"That's unfortunate," says one of the other reporters in the call.

On Thursday, Twitter suspended several accounts of journalists—including reporters from The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and Voice of America—in a move that was explained by Musk as targeting journalists who had shared private information of his whereabouts. "Basically assassination coordinates," Musk said.

One day before that, on Wednesday, Musk decided to permanently ban the "ElonJet" account, which tracked the flights of the billionaire's private jet using publicly available data. The social media platform also changed its rules to prevent all users from sharing another person's current location without consent.

Earlier this week, Musk said that his family was victim of a stalking incident in Los Angeles. "Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not," he tweeted on Thursday.

All of the journalists whose accounts have been banned had covered Musk's ban on "ElonJet." Many said they didn't break any of Twitter's rules.

CNN, commenting on the suspension of its journalist Donie O'Sullivan, wrote that "the impulsive and unjustified" move was "concerning but not surprising."

Musk ran a Twitter poll on Thursday asking users to decide whether all accounts "who doxxed my exact location in real-time" should be unsuspended "now" or "in 7 days."

As of Friday morning, a majority of 59.7 percent had voted to unsuspend the journalists' accounts immediately.

Update, 12/16/2022 5:30 a.m. ET time: This article has been updated to include more context on the story.