Taylor Lorenz’s Twitter account was reinstated on Sunday, hours after it had been suspended for what platform owner Elon Musk described as “prior doxxing action.”
Lorenz stated on Substack on Saturday that no one from Twitter informed her of the reason for her suspension.
“Never once in my 13-year career in social media have I received a single term of service or community guidelines violation, for my personal account or any account that I’ve run,” Lorenz wrote.
“Twitter has served as an essential real-time news source and played an important role in the journalism world, but Musk’s arbitrary suspensions of journalists who report on him should worry anyone who values journalism and free expression.”
Lorenz wrote that her account had only three active tweets at the time of her suspension, two of which promoted her profiles on other platforms.
Lorenz, a technology columnist for The Washington Post, wrote on Substack that Musk issued the ban Saturday night after she tweeted an inquiry for a story she was working on.
“Hello Elon, “@drewharwell and I sent you a couple of emails about this,” Lorenz says in his tweet. “We’ve learned some information that we’d like to share and discuss with you. We’re taking this very seriously and want to make sure it’s handled properly. Thanks.”
The suspension came two days after Ariadna Jacob, who runs a talent management firm, tweeted about Lorenz allegedly publishing her address in a New York Times article without her permission. “Such shameful behavior will not be tolerated going forward,” Musk responded to Jacob’s tweet.
A 2020 New York Times article written by Lorenz is at the heart of Jacob’s lawsuit, which seeks $11.6 million in damages.
Lorenz is the latest journalist covering Musk or Twitter to be suspended this week, joining CNN and The New York Times.
Sally Buzbee, the executive editor of the Washington Post, condemned the bans and called for their reinstatement.
Buzbee also stated that the “arbitrary suspension of another Post journalist further undermines Elon Musk’s claim that he intends to run Twitter as a platform dedicated to free speech.”
Musk described Lorenz’s suspension for “previous doxxing action” as “temporary” on Sunday. Lorenz acknowledged her return to Twitter hours later by posting a photo of a bandaged man in a hospital bed.
On Sunday, Twitter announced that it will “remove accounts created solely for the purpose of promoting other social platforms.”
“We recognize that many of our users are active on other social media platforms,” reads the announcement on the Twitter Support page. “However, we will no longer allow free promotion of certain social media platforms on Twitter.”
A subsequent tweet stated, “we will remove accounts created solely for the purpose of promoting other social platforms and content that contains links or usernames for the following platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr, and Post.”
Musk, who paid $44 billion for Twitter in October, promised last week to crack down on doxxing, which is the publication of someone’s personal information.
“Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation,” Musk tweeted on December 14. “This includes posting links to websites that provide real-time location information. Posting locations someone travelled to on a slightly delayed basis isn’t a safety issue, so it’s fine.”
The billionaire later polled Twitter on when he should lift suspensions for users who shared his real-time location, with the majority of voters saying “now.”
Twitter suspended and reinstated an account that tracked Musk’s private plane last week.
