No Police Report Filed About Elon Musk’s ‘Stalker’ Claims, Says LAPD
After Twitter suspended an account that had been providing publicly available flight data for Elon Musk’s private jet, the social media platform’s new owner and CEO suggested the page was putting him and his family in danger.
in a thread of three tweetsMusk said any account that provides “real-time” location information on anyone would be suspended because “it’s a breach of physical security.” The billionaire also alleged that on Tuesday night, a “crazy stalker” followed him and climbed on the hood of a car carrying Musk’s son.
Musk vowed to take legal action against the college student who ran the flight tracking account, which went through @ElonJet, and any “organization that supported harm to my family.”
On Thursday, the Los Angeles Police Department said no police report had been filed on the incident that raised Musk’s concern.
“LAPD’s Threat Management Unit is aware of the situation and Elon Musk’s tweet and is in contact with his representatives and security team,” the department said in a statement. “No crime reports have been filed yet.”
The police statement came as Twitter and Musk faced increasing scrutiny over a wave of suspensions, including several journalists who cover Musk.
Among those whose accounts were suspended Thursday night were The New York Times’ Ryan Mac, CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, Mashable’s Matt Binder, The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell, political pundit Keith Olbermann and Voice of America’s Steve Herman. .
On Friday night, most accounts they were back after Musk conducted a poll on Twitter asking if they should be restored “now” or “in 7 days”. The @ElonJet account and Olbermann’s page appeared to remain suspended.
Harwell’s last post before she was suspended was about removing the Twitter account of one of her competitors, Mastodon, for posting a link to her own version of the @ElonJet account that tracked Musk’s plane. according to a tweet from NBC News reporter Ben Collins.
O’Sullivan and Binder’s accounts were suspended after they shared the LAPD statement.
Binder said Thursday that he was immediately suspended after sharing a screenshot of O’Sullivan’s statement.
“I did not share any location data, per Twitter’s new terms. I also did not share any links to ElonJet or other location tracking accounts,” Binder said. “I have been very critical of Musk, but I have never broken any of the policies listed on Twitter.”
musk, a self described A free-speech absolutist, he vowed to make sweeping changes to the social media platform once his control of the company ends, though last month, tweeted that his “commitment to free speech even extends to not banning the account that follows my plane, even though that is a direct risk to personal safety.”
On Wednesday, Twitter announced a policy update that prohibited sharing “live location information, including information shared on Twitter directly or links to third-party travel route URLs.”
“We make no exceptions to this policy for journalists or any other accounts,” said Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin. the edge via email.
On Thursday night, Musk posted several tweets in response to journalists’ account suspensions.
“Hitting on me all day is totally fine, but cheating on my real-time location and putting my family in danger isn’t.” a tweet read.
“They posted my exact location in real time, basically the coordinates of the murder, in (obviously) direct violation of Twitter’s terms of service,” he said. other.
Musk also briefly joined a Twitter Spaces audio chat room in which several of the banned journalists discussed the news.
“Show the link to real-time information, prohibit evasion,” Musk said. “Dox, you get suspended, end of story, that’s all.”
Banned Washington Post technical reporter Harwell, who was also in the chat room, responded: “This is reporting… there is news value in public data.”
Times staff writer Jaimie Ding contributed to this report.