Twitter Inc. suspended the accounts of several journalists Thursday without publicly specifying why, the latest instance of the platform making content or user decisions under Elon Musk without much transparency.

The accounts belonged to journalists from publications including CNN, the Washington Post, the New York Times and Mashable. Representatives for the outlets said they didn’t receive any explanation of why the accounts were suspended.

Ella Irwin, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, declined in an email to comment on specific user accounts.

On Thursday, Twitter also suspended the official account of Mastodon, a competing social-media platform that has gained prominence in recent months, also without explanation. A representative for Mastodon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Elon Musk has said that he plans to make Twitter a bastion of free speech.PHOTO: MIKE BLAKE/REUTERS

The move to suspend journalists’ accounts is the latest extraordinary twist in Mr. Musk’s stewardship of Twitter. He has said that he intends to make the platform a bastion of free speech, with transparent rules governing any content decisions.

He has taken several steps that have added confusion regarding Twitter’s content policies under his watch, including a decision to suspend the account of Kanye West after the rapper posted a swastika image in a tweet, and the sudden dissolution of Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council, a six-year-old collection of outside groups that advised the platform on enforcing its content policies.