CNN anchor Jim Acosta said he was “locked” out of using his Twitter account due to the platform’s controversial new policy barring “free promotion of prohibited third-party” competitors including Mastodon, Instagram and Facebook.
Acosta noted that Twitter locked his account sometime Saturday night and, when he woke up on Sunday, he said the platform found one of his tweets mentioning his Mastodon and Post accounts in violation of the policy.
Twitter, which appears to still be enforcing the policy despite deleting a page detailing the new move, explained via its website on Sunday that the policy violations include “linking out” to the competitive platforms along with link aggregation websites like linktr.ee.
Acosta’s name on Twitter mentions that he’s “also on Post and Mastodon” and he tweeted that he would tell followers “all about” his Saturday show on Post and Mastodon — however, both his name and the tweet didn’t link out or include the @ signs of Acosta’s accounts.
HuffPost has reached out to Twitter to determine why the platform locked Acosta out of his account.
“I’m still trying to sort it out... this all feels very arbitrary and a little frenetic,” said Acosta during an interview with Business Insider reporter Linette Lopez.
Lopez, one of several journalists who saw her account suspended on the platform, said she hasn’t heard anything from Twitter about her account, which she said she still can’t access. Lopez has reported on the billionaire and his businesses for years.
She told Acosta that she found the platform’s new policy humorous and recalled a time when Elon Musk shared pictures from her Facebook profile during “a Twitter campaign against” her.
You can watch Acosta’s interview with Lopez below.