Spectator story debunking Elon Musk ‘alt account’ theory banned on X

A reporter has been restricted from posting on Elon Musk’s X for thirty days due to an article she wrote which The Spectator published over the weekend. The story itself has also been censored on X — you cannot post it on the site — with the reason given that it is “potentially harmful.” Here’s what happened.

For months, there has been a social-media rumor that Elon Musk was operating an “alt account” under the pseudonym “Adrian Dittmann.” A number of users on the site were circulating it to make fun of Musk. Some media outlets — Newsweek, the New Republic, the Daily Mail — wrote up stories covering the rumor. None sought to examine its veracity. 

Jacqueline Sweet, a contributor to The Spectator, began investigating the claims in late December. In her work, Jacqueline reviewed a lot of publicly available information: YouTube videos published by the Fijian government; company press releases; previous X posts; audio from Twitter/X Spaces; business filings and social media account posts. This evidence all pointed to disproving the rumor: rather than a pseudonym for Elon Musk, Dittmann was a real person, a German who went by the name his account bears who lives and works in Fiji. Her work was thorough and methodical — and she sought comment from Dittmann and a number of people who know him prior to publication.

After we published, Musk responded to Jacqueline’s X post of her story. “I am Adrian Dittmann,” he joked. “It’s time the world knew.” But a few hours later, Jacqueline’s post was gone: “This Post violated the X Rules,” reads a message in its place. Jacqueline found herself “temporarily restricted” from posting on the site unless she deleted three posts that were supposedly in breach of the X Rules. And all users on X were unable to share the link to her Spectator article: try posting or messaging it and you’ll be met with a note saying, “We can’t complete this request because this link has been identified by X or our partners as being potentially harmful.”

Students of recent history will recall that the New York Post was met with similar penalties after publishing its first “Hunter Biden laptop” story back in October 2020, when X was still Twitter. The censoring of that story, an affront to freedom of expression that The Spectator challenged at the time, was supposedly a major factor in Musk’s quest to buy the site and enshrine free speech. A spurious “rules violation” was also given as the reason for preventing the Hunter Biden laptop story from being circulated.

Our story gathers together many pieces of public information — his name, video of him on the government YouTube account of the country where he lives — to challenge and debunk a widely circulating conspiracy theory. It’s not so much about who Adrian Dittmann is as about who he isn’t: presenting the case that Dittmann is not, in fact, secretly the richest man in the world is clearly in the public interest and has news value, particularly considering Musk’s recently developed interest in government and international affairs.

What the story does not do is “doxx” Dittmann: it does not feature any private information such as his address, phone number or email, or any pictures that aren’t already freely viewable online. It cannot be considered “unmasking” to suggest that someone called Adrian Dittmann uses an X account bearing the name “Adrian Dittmann.”

There is no good reason why Jacqueline should be stopped from posting — or why the Dittmann story should be prevented from circulation on X.

Update January 7, 3 a.m. ET: The ban on posting the story on X has been lifted. Jacqueline’s X account remains restricted.