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Mastodon Has Been Banned On Twitter, As Well As Those Investigating Why

Zachariah Kelly Avatar
Zachariah Kelly
Mastodon Has Been Banned On Twitter, As Well As Those Investigating Why

The official Twitter account of social media competitor Mastodon has been suspended from Twitter.

Spotted by Twitter user @somospostpc, the @joinmastodon account has been suspended, with the standard ‘Twitter suspends accounts that violate the Twitter Rules’ description posted on the blank profile.

Drew Harwell from the Washington Post shortly after took to Twitter to investigate the suspension. According to Harwell, Mastodon’s account was suspended because it posted a link to the Mastodon version of Elon Jet, a Twitter account that was suspended yesterday following a change in Twitter rules.

During the time of this article’s writing, Drew Harwell’s account (@DrewHarwell) has also been suspended, as confirmed by his colleague Tony Romm. His assessment was then echoed by the director of information security at First Look Media, Micah Lee (whose account is still active on Twitter at the time of writing). Nope, it’s gone. The text from @micahflee (now banned) went as follows:

Twitter just banned Mastodon’s official Twitter account @joinmastodon with 174,000 followers, probably because it tweeted a link to @ElonJet‘s Mastodon account. Twitter is now censoring posting the link, but the user is @elonjet@mastodon.social pic.twitter.com/5P4NCy9bHX

Elon Jet relied on publically available flight data records to track Elon Musk’s private jet. It was suspended yesterday, along with a lot of other accounts that rely on publically available travel data. Musk says he is taking the account operator to court over its operation.

Now, Mastodon has been caught up in the banning.

Users did note yesterday that posts including links to the Instagram account Elon Jet were unable to be sent. A user we linked in the original draft for this story, @webster, said this on the platform, but was banned before publication.

It really does look like the guy who thinks the internet is all about him is striking back right now. Again, the Elon Jet account was based entirely on publically accessible data. We’ve reached out to Twitter for clarification on the suspension, but Musk may put out a Tweet himself.

Elsewhere in Elon world, meanwhile, the (formerly) richest man in the world has sold billions of dollars of Tesla stock, continuing to break promises (firstly, claiming that he wouldn’t take legal action against Elon Jet, then saying he wouldn’t sell any more stock in Tesla this year).

Totally average things going on right now. A $US44 billion purchase has never looked more normal.

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