Elon Musk is exercising his god-given bought and paid for right to kick prominent journalists off Twitter because they don’t kiss his ring.

The accounts suspended included Ryan Mac of The New York Times; Drew Harwell of The Washington Post; Aaron Rupar, an independent journalist; Donie O’Sullivan of CNN; Matt Binder of Mashable; Tony Webster, an independent journalist; Micah Lee of The Intercept; and the political journalist Keith Olbermann. It was unclear what the suspensions had in common; each user’s Twitter page included a message that said it suspended accounts that “violate the Twitter rules.”

The moves came a day after Twitter suspended more than 25 accounts that tracked the planes of government agencies, billionaires and high-profile individuals, including that of Mr. Musk. Many of the accounts were operated by Jack Sweeney, a 20-year-old college student and flight tracking enthusiast who had used Twitter to post updates about the location of Mr. Musk’s private plane using publicly available information.

I can see not allowing flight tracking, because that’s stalker behavior or worse, but some of the banished journalists were reporting on the tracker-banning; banning them doesn’t seem reasonable at all.

“Tonight’s suspension of the Twitter accounts of a number of prominent journalists, including The New York Times’s Ryan Mac, is questionable and unfortunate,” said Charlie Stadtlander, a spokesman for The Times. “Neither The Times nor Ryan have received any explanation about why this occurred. We hope that all of the journalists’ accounts are reinstated and that Twitter provides a satisfying explanation for this action.”

Also we’re getting a cascade effect now.

After his suspension from Twitter, Mr. Sweeney turned to Mastodon, an alternative social network. After Mastodon used Twitter to promote Mr. Sweeney’s new account on Thursday, Twitter suspended Mastodon’s account. As some journalists shared the news of Mastodon’s suspension, their own accounts were suspended.

Don’t mention the war!

Mr. Musk said in October that he would form a council to advise him on policy matters before making changes to the company’s content moderation policies. The council has not materialized. This week, Mr. Musk disbanded a trust and safety advisory group that had guided Twitter on thorny issues like harassment and child exploitation.

All good. Billionaires doing what they’re supposed to do.