Journalist’s X Account Suspended After Debunking Elon Musk Fan Account Conspiracy Theory
A journalist, Jacqueline Sweet, had her X account suspended and links to her recent article blocked on the platform after she published a piece debunking online theories that an Elon Musk fan account was actually the billionaire himself. Sweet’s article, published in The Spectator, investigated the identity of the fan account, which has been linked to a man named Adrian Dittmann who claims to live in Fiji. After concluding that Dittmann was not actually Musk, Sweet posted a link to her story on X, which led to a response from Musk jokingly claiming to be Dittmann.
Following the exchange, Sweet’s account was suspended, along with those of a Swiss hacker and journalist Ryan Fae, who had also investigated the identity of the fan account. Links to The Spectator article and the Swiss hacker’s blog post were also blocked on X, with the platform citing “technical issues.” Sweet was notified that her account had been suspended for 30 days, citing a violation of X’s rules related to “posting private information.”
Sweet denied that she had doxxed Dittmann, and claimed that Musk was behind the suspension of her account. The article gathered together “many pieces of public information” to challenge and debunk the conspiracy theory, and did not feature any private information about Dittmann. X did not return a request for comment.
