Several high-profile journalists who cover Elon Musk's companies had their Twitter accounts suspended on Thursday night.
The New York Times, CNN, and the Washington Post were among the major news outlets whose reporters were affected by the sudden ban. Additionally, reporters from The Intercept, Mashable, and independent journalists Aaron Rupar and Tony Webster also had their accounts suspended.
Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) later told The Verge that the suspension was related to the sharing of location data.
Musk himself has not commented directly on the suspensions but did tweet about the issue of doxxing, or the release of private information about individuals online. He wrote that "criticising me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not".
According to Twitter's head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, accounts that engage in doxxing are given a temporary seven-day suspension.
It is worth noting that the suspensions come after Twitter suspended the account @ElonJet, as well as other accounts using publicly available information to track Musk's private plane.
The owner of @ElonJet, Jack Sweeney, also had his personal account suspended. Musk has since vowed to take legal action against Sweeney and "organisations who supported harm to my family".
In a tweet, Musk claimed that a "crazy stalker" had used live location sharing to find and accost a vehicle carrying his children in Los Angeles.
In a related development, Twitter also suspended the official account of Mastodon, a social media platform that has emerged as an alternative to Twitter since Musk bought it for $44bn in October.
The suspension of Mastodon's account reportedly occurred after the platform used Twitter to promote Sweeney's new account on Thursday.