Washington Post tech columnist Taylor Lorenz said her Twitter account was suspended after she asked Elon Musk, the new owner of the social network, for comment on a story she was working on.
Lorenz’s Twitter account, 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 video she shared on TikTok.
Musk has not publicly commented on Twitter’s suspension of Lorenz’s account.
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 — on the pretext that they had “doxxed” him by posting links to an account that tracked his private jet — before reinstating several of them on Friday night.
In her Substack post, Lorenz said there were only three tweets live on her Twitter account when it was banned: two were promoting my social media profiles on TikTok and Instagram, and one was a tweet where she asked Musk for comment on story she and WaPo colleague Drew Harwell have been working on involving Musk. Lorenz did not provided details about what the story was about.
On Friday, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), currently chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, called out Musk’s banning of journalists.
“Elon Musk calls himself a free speech absolutist, to justify turning a blind eye to hatred and bigotry on Twitter. But when journalists report unfavorable news, they are banned without warning,” Schiff wrote in a tweet. “The devotion to free speech is apparently not that absolute. But the hypocrisy is.”
Musk replied to Schiff, “Thankfully, you lose your chairmanship very soon. Your brain is too small.”