After having their accounts reinstated on Saturday, tech journalists caught in the “Thursday night massacre“, found that their restored Twitter privileges were incomplete. Many had to delete tweets – with the notable exception of Mashable’s Matt Binder – and appeared to have no access to Twitter Spaces.
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As of this writing, at least eight of the accounts, including Binder’s, have been reinstated after a Twitter poll tweeted by Musk overwhelmingly backed lifting the ban. However, many journalists, including Donie O’Sullivan and Drew Harwell, had to delete tweets. On Saturday, some were still refusing to do so, meaning they could not yet fully unlock their accounts and tweet again.
The requirement to remove offensive tweets isn’t new, but losing access to Spaces appears to be a new kind of lingering effect caused by a suspension.
The bizarre chain of events surrounding the discovery of the Spaces glitch appears to have been the cause of the feature being temporarily shut down in the first place.
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On December 15, Musk, without warning, banned several high-profile journalists for ostensibly violating Twitter’s doxxing policy. December 16, News Journalist Katie Notopoulos went live on Twitter Spaces to discuss the bans and was joined by Drew Harwell from Washington Post and Binder, two of the suspended journalists. Although neither was able to post new tweets or see their old tweets visible, both were able to access Spaces due to an apparent issue. After the discussion drew thousands of listeners, Musk joined in, saying anyone who doxxed would be suspended. After Spaces reporters hit back at Musk, saying they hadn’t released any real-time flight data, as he claimed, the billionaire left the call. According to Notopoulos in a tweetshortly after Musk leaked the call, Twitter Spaces was removed from the entire platform to fix what Musk claimed was a “legacy bug.”
Spaces is now back. It appears that the bug that was fixed was to ensure that suspended accounts could not access Spaces. But according to Binder on Twitter, while his account isn’t suspended, he can’t access the feature at this time.
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The massive layoffs and resignations seem to have compounded the platform’s problem with glitches. from Twitter SMS-based 2-factor authentication paused for a while after Musk claimed to get rid of ‘bloatware’“, and the platform’s automated copyright system recently allowed full movies to be posted on Twitter. So, in light of all the technical issues, recently suspended journalists who need access to Spaces probably shouldn’t expect quick tech support.
