A journalist said Sunday that her X account had been suspended and links to her recent posts had been blocked on the platform after she published an online theory that Elon Musk’s fan account was actually the billionaire himself.
Journalist Jacqueline Sweet wrote an article for the UK’s The Spectator magazine, revealing how and why the X account, owned by a man living in Fiji, is not Musk.
A man named Adrian Dittmann, who goes by the same name on X, has posted positively about Musk and his exploits. He also sounds like Musk, having engaged with the tech billionaire several times on various X “Spaces” chat rooms. The two have a striking similarity in their voices, with Dittmann at one point telling Musk that he grew up everywhere and that he lives in Oceania, but that he doesn’t want to reveal more information for fear of people following him.
In recent days, several outlets have questioned whether Musk is secretly impersonating X under an alternate identity. But Sweet, along with a Swiss hacker/developer known as Maia Arson Crimew and journalist Ryan Fae, investigated the person behind Dittmann’s account, determining that he was actually a man named Adrian Dittmann, who appears to live in Fiji.
After Sweet posted a link to her story on X reporting that Musk was not Dittmann, the X billionaire jokingly replied, “I’m Adrian Dittmann. It’s time for the world to know.”
After a series of exchanges, Sweet said her account had been suspended. The Swiss hackers and Fae were saying the same thing, and as of Monday afternoon, links to The Spectator articles, as well as the Swiss hackers and Fae blog posts, could not be posted on X or sent via the platform’s direct message feature.
The reason given for such a block made it sound like a technical issue.
The notification on X says, “Something went wrong, but don’t worry — let it fire again,” the notification on X says when a user tries to post a link to The Spectator.
When sent via direct message, X instead says, “This request appears to be automated. To protect our users from spam and other malicious activity, we are unable to complete this activity at this time. Please try again later.”
Sweet wrote on Sunday on rival social media platform Bluesky that her post to which Musk was responding had been removed and her account suspended for 30 days. In a screenshot of the message Sweet said she received from X, the platform said she was suspended for violating X’s rules regarding “posting private information.”
The note said, “It is against our rules to share someone’s private information online without their permission. Sometimes called ‘doxing,’ it is a violation of their privacy and can pose serious safety and security risks to those affected.”
Sweet denied that she did not doxx Dittmann.
“I think Elon is crazy and I ruined his crazy game of making fun of his critics who believe Adrian Dittmann is his German and took his toy and went home,” Sweet wrote on Bluesky.
Matt McDonald, the U.S. managing editor of The Spectator, wrote in an op-ed Monday that the story brought “a lot of public information” to “challenge and debunk widely circulated conspiracy theories.” McDonald noted that the piece did not include any of Dittman’s private information, such as a phone number or email address, or any photos that have not yet been made public.
“It’s not so much that Adrian Dittmann is someone he’s not: making the case that Dittmann is not secretly the world’s richest man is of public interest and particularly interesting considering Musk’s recent interest in government and international affairs,” McDonald wrote.
“It cannot be considered ‘cover-up’ to suggest that someone named Adrian Dittmann uses an X account named ‘Adrian Dittmann.’”
X did not return a request for comment.
Dittmann, for his part, posted on X stating that he is not Elon Musk.
