Even as Twitter suspended several journalists’ accounts citing ‘doxxing’ of owner Elon Musk’s jet, the Germany government warned the platform on Friday that it had a problem with moves that jeopardised press freedom.

The German Foreign Office tweeted screenshots on Friday of the accounts of journalists suspended by Twitter, warning the platform.

Twitter suspended the accounts of several prominent journalists who had posted about its new owner Musk, prompting protests from their media organisations, a Reuters report from Berlin stated.

“Press freedom cannot be switched on and off on a whim,” the German ministry wrote on its official Twitter account, “The journalists below can no longer follow us, comment and criticise. We have a problem with that, @Twitter.”

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

German regulators are already pushing government institutions to stop posting announcements exclusively to privately-held platforms, touting alternatives like the fledgling decentralised social media network Mastodon.

A German government spokesperson later told a regular news conference that the government was monitoring developments on the Twitter platform with growing concern.

Twitter on Thursday suspended the accounts of several prominent journalists who recently wrote about Musk, with the billionaire tweeting that rules banning the publishing of personal information applied to all, including journalists.

Responding to a tweet on the account suspensions, Musk, who has described himself as a free speech absolutist, tweeted: “Same doxxing rules apply to ‘journalists’ as to everyone else,” a reference to Twitter rules banning the sharing of personal information, called doxxing.

Musk’s tweet referred to Twitter’s Wednesday suspension of @elonjet, an account tracking his private jet in real time using data available in the public domain. Musk had threatened legal action against the account’s operator, saying his son had been mistakenly followed by a “crazy stalker”.

It was unclear if all the journalists whose accounts were suspended had commented on or shared news about @elonjet.

“Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not,” Musk tweeted on Thursday.

He tweeted on Thursday that there would be a seven-day suspension for doxxing, following that up with a poll asking Twitter users to vote on when to reinstate the doxxed accounts.

He then said he had offered too many options on the poll and would redo it, after results showed that some 43 percent voted for reinstating the accounts “now” — the largest share for any option.

Among the journalist accounts suspended on Thursday was that of Washington Post reporter Drew Harwell (@drewharwell), who wrote on social media platform Mastodon that he had recently written about Musk and posted links to “publicly available, legally acquired data.”

Twitter also suspended the official account of Mastodon (@joinmastodon), which has emerged as an alternative to Twitter. Mastodon could not immediately be reached for comment.

Twitter updated its policy on Wednesday prohibiting the sharing of “live location information.”