transcript of elon musk conversation with journalists

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Katie Notopoulos, BuzzFeed News: ...in the last few hours, with a handful of journalists being banned.

Elon Musk: Yeah. Well, as I’m sure everyone who’s been doxxed would agree, showing real-time information about somebody’s location is inappropriate, and I think everyone on this call would not like that to be done to them, and there’s not going to be any distinction in the future between journalists and regular people. Everyone’s going to be treated the same. You’re not special because you’re a journalist, you’re just a twitter- you’re a citizen. So, no special treatment. You doxx, you get suspended, end of story. And-

Notopoulos: Elon, do-

Elon Musk: And ban evasion, trying to be clever about it, like oh, I posted a link to the real-time information, that is obviously simply trying to evade the meaning, that is no different from- hitting paste than actually showing real-time information.

Notopoulos: So when you’re saying, posting a link to it, some of the people like Drew [Harwell] and Ryan Mac from the New York Times who were banned, they were reporting on it in the course of pretty normal journalistic endeavors. You consider that a tricky attempt at ban evasion?

Elon Musk: You show the link to the real-time information, ban evasion. Obviously.

Notopoulos: Drew, I don’t think you were posting the real-time information, right?

Drew Harwell, The Washington Post: You’re suggesting that we’re sharing your address, which is not true. And you’re suggesting that we’re posting-

Elon Musk: (interrupting) It is true.

Harwell: We never- I never posted your address.

Elon Musk: You posted a link to [the] address.

Harwell: We posted a link, in the course of reporting about ElonJet we posted links to Elon Jet, which are now not online, and now banned on Twitter and Twitter also, of course, marks even the Instagram and Mastodon accounts of ElonJet as harmful, using, we have to admit- acknowledge, using the same exact link-blocking technique that you have criticized as part of the Hunter Biden New York Post story in 2020, so what is different here and there?

Elon Musk: It’s no more acceptable for me- for you than it is for me, same thing, so, anyway-

Harwell: So it’s unacceptable what you’re doing?

Elon Musk: No. What- you doxx, you get suspended, end of story, that’s it. (leaves call)

Notopoulos: Elon, I have to ask, I think what everyone’s wondering is, it’s highly unusual for journalists at the Washington Post and the New York Times to be- have their twitter accounts suspended, and it just so happens that it’s the boss in charge, so what’s the deal there? Oh, I think Elon has left. I guess we’ll never know the answer, unless we can guess what the difference is there.

Harwell: That’s unfortunate, because, yeah-

Ben Collins, NBC News: I had so many questions, I was rarin’ to go, guys.

Harwell: Yeah, I was too.

Joan Donovan, social scientist at Harvard University: I was gonna order a Cybertruck, I’m not gonna lie.

Harwell: I just wanna say, I don’t wanna browbeat him. And, you know, this is reporting. There is value to reporting where people go. Most of what ElonJet shared was him going to the factory in California, or the factory in Texas...

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