Germany’s foreign ministry released screenshots of suspended journalist accounts on a network owned by Elon Musk on Friday, warning the platform that the ministry has problems with actions that threaten press freedom, Reuters reported.

Twitter has suspended the accounts of several prominent journalists who wrote about its new owner Elon Musk, sparking media protests.

“Freedom of the press cannot be turned on and off at will,” the ministry wrote on its official Twitter account.

“The journalists below can no longer follow us, comment and criticize us. We have a problem with that, @Twitter.”

German regulators are already pressuring public institutions to stop advertising exclusively on private platforms, promoting alternatives such as the new decentralized social network Mastodon.

A government spokesman later said at another press conference that the government was following developments on the Twitter platform with growing concern.

Twitter also suspended the Mastodon Network account, and attempts to link the Mastodon accounts in tweets frequently resulted in error messages on Friday.

On Friday morning, the number of new user registrations on the Mastodon network increased to 4,000 per hour, which is four times the rate of last week.

But with about 8.5 million registered users, Mastodon is still a “small fish” compared to Twitter, which has half a billion users.