Richmond Time Dispatch: Column: I Was Suspended from Twitter; I May Never Tweet Again

 I now have something in common with former President Donald Trump. Both of us were permanently suspended by Twitter. The circumstances were quite different.

Trump’s suspension, stemming from his rhetoric leading up to the storming of the U.S. Capitol, took place under the previous Twitter ownership, and he has since been reinstated even though he was impeached by the House of Representatives for incitement of insurrection. My suspension last December resulted from tweeting about other journalists who were suspended from Twitter for tweeting about a banned account that shared the location of new Twitter owner Elon Musk’s private jet.

Musk subsequently tweeted the journalists’ accounts have been “restored.” That was misleading. In my case I would not be able to tweet to my 115,000 followers, view my timeline or see the accounts I follow unless I removed three tweets mentioning @ElonJet. I appealed and was informed my appeal was denied, putting me indefinitely in a deep level of Twitter purgatory. The only recourse I have, according to Twitter, is to withdraw my appeal and remove the offending tweets, which Musk inaccurately characterized as public dissemination of “assassination coordinates.”

None of the suspended journalists revealed Musk’s real time location. They did mention the banned account that used publicly available information to track his private jet.

For four years as a White House correspondent, traveling with Trump dozens of times, I tweeted in real time the location of Air Force One and the president’s whereabouts. This was considered public information, released by the White House to all its accredited journalists. No one at Twitter or anywhere else ever accused us of tweeting assassination coordinates.

Twitter first instituted its rules against posting private information late last year, stating users “may not publish or post other people’s private information without their express authorization and permission.” There is an exception, however, for information shared somewhere else online before being posted to Twitter. Despite this, Twitter stated it may take action if the sharing of the information presents “the potential for physical harm.”

Musk made the ridiculous claim that the @ElonJet account and anyone who retweeted its content was guilty of “doxxing” — sharing another person’s personal information, such as their location, without consent.

After Musk purchased Twitter, I set up accounts on other emerging social media platforms, Mastodon and post.news. I saw these new accounts as insurance policies — alternatives but not replacements for Twitter should my favorite site’s servers begin to melt down due to the layoffs of techs and other personnel. There was also the concern about the deterioration of the discourse on the platform and the reinstatement of accounts that had been banned for hate speech, disinformation and personal attacks.

Despite the environment I did not plan to abandon Twitter, where up to 100 times daily I reposted my news stories, on-the-site observations of breaking news and retweets of stories from other mainstream journalists and news organizations — all without engaging in opinion.

I did expect to lose my Twitter appeal, although I sensed a small victory in the court of public opinion with an outpouring of protests against the suspension of me and other journalists by members of the U.S. Congress, journalistic organizations and others. Since I do not intend to remove the objectionable tweets, as that would be an admission I did something improper, I may never tweet again from my @W7VOA account.

My insurance policies are already providing benefits. At the time I was banished from Twitter, I had about 3,000 followers on Mastodon. That quickly increased tenfold. On post.news, a simpler and more user-friendly site, I also already have thousands of followers. While the totals pale in comparison to my Twitter followers, I have noticed something unexpected and remarkable — the engagement far exceeds what I recently experienced on Twitter, perhaps because many Twitter accounts have been abandoned.

The Government Accountability Project has requested the U.S. Senate look into this in 2023.

I know some who fled what they considered the toxicity of Twitter are exploring other platforms and prefer no longer to be exposed to politics, disasters and other mayhem, but the majority, 95% according to an unscientific online poll I conducted on Mastodon, have encouraged me to post even more news than I did on Twitter.

News items related to the turmoil at Twitter under Elon Musk are currently generating the highest level of engagement. Even those who’ve deserted Twitter appear to retain a strong interest in the fate of the influential social media platform and its 400 million users.