Controversial Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz says she has been suspended from Twitter upon order of its owner, Elon Musk.
Lorenz made the claim in a Substack post, adding that she did not and has not violated Twitter’s terms of service.
On Substack, Lorenz claimed she only had three tweets live on her account at the time of the suspension. One of them was a tweet sent to Musk.
Lorenz claimed she and colleague Drew Harwell (also banned by Musk earlier in the week) were “working on a story involving Musk and were hoping to get [a] comment from him.”
“When I went to log in and see if he had responded to our query, I was suspended,” Lorenz said in the Substack post. “I received zero communication from the company on why I was suspended or what terms I violated.”
“I have been on Twitter since 2010 and have run Twitter account for major media brands including Verizon, Wordpress, The Daily Mail, People magazine, The Hill, and dozens more,” she added. “Never once in my 13-year career in social media have I received a single terms of service or community guidelines violation, for my personal account or any account that I’ve run.”
She went on to complain that bans on journalists should worry “anyone who values free speech and expression.”
Musk banned several journalists from the Washington Post, CNN, New York Times and other publications earlier this week. He claimed they were “doxxing” him by sharing his real-time location, which he termed, “assassination coordinates.”
He originally said the affected journalists would remain suspended from the platform for seven days. But after launching a poll on the matter – which indicated most people wanted them reinstated – Musk reneged and lifted his ban.
Lorenz has been critical of Musk’s decision to release the so-called “Twitter Files,” which detail arbitrary bans on conservatives and government pressure on the social media outlet to squelch unfavorable comments on the regime.
In other Twitter news, the service has decided to stop the promotion of other social media sites on its service.
