Free speech hero Elon Musk is yet again silencing his perceived opponents. This time, he is doing J.D. Vance’s dirty work.
Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein on Thursday reported on the leaked 271-page dossier on Vance, allegedly from the Trump campaign’s research team, which mainstream media outlets had refused to publish. Just hours later, Klippenstein was banned from X, where he’d shared a link to his reporting and to the dossier.
X users have found that they are unable to even post the link to Klippenstein’s Substack newsletter on X without receiving a message that the link is “potentially harmful.”
For ease, here is Klippenstein’s reporting on the dossier: https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/read-the-jd-vance-dossier
This isn’t the first time Musk has used X to meddle with progressive accounts on the platform. X has come under fire for banning or limiting an NPR story critical of Trump, the Uncommitted Movement account, and even KamalaHQ.
In January, Musk temporarily banned Klippenstein, who worked for The Intercept at the time, and a handful of other journalists. The only connection between them: their left-wing politics and their criticism of Musk.
Though some may try to argue that Klippenstein’s post broke X guidelines by publishing hacked materials and is thus “doxxing” Vance, Twitter actually changed its terms of service years ago, in part thanks to the Hunter Biden laptop story and claims of “anti-conservative” bias. The page regarding the platform’s hacked materials policy no longer exists. Musk heavily criticized Twitter’s supposed suppression of the laptop story, later elevating the so-called “Twitter Files” with right-wing journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss to expose the social media company’s previous content-moderation strategies.
At the time of publication, Klippenstein’s account is still suspended.
