The suspensions affected several journalists and commentators, including Texas Observer journalist Steven Monacelli, Ken Klippensten of The Intercept, podcaster Rob Rousseau, and Alan MacLeod of MintPress News. The landing page for their accounts says it’s been suspended, but does not give any explanation as to why. A message on the profiles simply states “X suspends accounts which violate the X rules.”

The ban didn’t just hit journalists either. Several prominent-left leaning accounts were also purged from the website, including the account for the TrueAnon podcast and @zei_squirrel, a cartoon squirrel that tweets media criticism of figures like Glenn Greenwald.

This isn't the first time the site has banned reporters. In April, it permanently suspended Wired reporter Dell Cameron after he spoke with a hacker who accessed conservative pundit Matt Walsh’s emails. In December of 2022, it suspended the accounts of ten journalists who’d been critical of site owner Elon Musk.

https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-x-twitter-journalists-banning-spree-1851151593

https://twitter.com/liz_franczak/status/1744712132015370527

Edit: they're back now

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[–] TankieTanuki@hexbear.net 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I'm spinning up my own single-user Mastodon instance and the VPS required to do so is surprisingly cheap; it just takes a little technical knowledge. If I were a little more well off I could easily open it up for user registrations.

mastodon has a lot of potential, but there are a lot of on-boarding issues that i think could be easily solved by caring a little less about advertising "federation and open source" as the main selling point. ya feel?

I'm not sure I understand, but I want to. Can you elaborate?

[–] xj9@hexbear.net 2 points 10 months ago

The Hexbear Method. Build the website and then federate it. The value doesn't come from "open source" or "federation", but they are nice things to have. I think widespread self-hosting is ultimately beneficial, but that's another side-benefit not really a broad selling point.