On January 20th, Elon Musk, Founder of Tesla and SpaceX, re-enabled the Twitter accounts of numerous journalists who had previously been banned over a joke at his expense. The controversy began after Musk released details on his new, supersonic transport concept, the Tesla “ElonJet”. In response, a journalist tweeted “it’s Elon Musk and his ACME jet packs now,” a reference to the fictional company from the classic Roadrunner cartoon.
In response, Musk’s followers targeted the journalist and his colleagues, resulting in several of them having their accounts banned. Following this, Musk took to twitter and announced that he had personally restored the accounts and apologized for all of the disruptions caused by his followers.
This apology comes in light of Elon Musk’s reputation for feuding with media figures on Twitter. Earlier this year, Musk fired back at journalist Barry Ritholz after the latter wrote an opinion piece criticising Musk’s aggressive stance when dealing with skeptics of his company’s technologies. Many have described the incident as being emblematic of Musk’s penchant for ignoring critics in favour of chasing after his lofty ambitions.
Although, following the ElonJet controversy, it appears that Musk is making an effort to be more understanding of journalists’ tweets and softer towards criticism. It appears that Elon Musk is not only willing to apologize for the actions of his own followers but also for his own reactions to criticism. This is a positive gesture and action from Musk, although some may consider it a token gesture.
Still, it is a good sign that, at the least, Musk is willing to recognize the unintended consequence of his actions and that journalists should be given their right to free speech without fear of censure. This course of action is certainly to be respected and perhaps it is a sign that Elon Musk is moving away from the confrontational attitude that has marked some of his past twitter feuds.
It remains to be seen what future interactions Musk may have with reporters and skeptics but it is clear that this incident has put journalism and free speech back in the spotlight, a development which may have a lasting impact on the way conversations between individuals or entities take place on social media.