Let's not forget the time Musk tried to get a guy to take down a Twitter account that tracks Elon's private jet. If Elon owned Twitter he would just close the account himself.

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-offered-5k-remove-...

Musk offered him money because he was concerned about his safety. Which is a very legitimate concern. See John Lennon.

It certainly wasn't an attempt to silence a critic, which is the thing people say he'll start doing when he gets control of Twitter.

How having some twitter account affect his safety? That twitter account just re-post data that is completely public already.

Imagine someone stood outside your house and tweeted every time you left your house. They're not doing anything wrong, anyone can walk down the street and see if you leave your house.

Would you be happy knowing that all the criminals in your area now have easily accessible information on when you're home or not?

There's nothing stopping someone doing that. It's only someone gathering information that anyone else could and tweeting it. Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should.

> Would you be happy knowing that all the criminals in your area now have easily accessible information on when you're home or not

I would gladly accept that in return for hundreds of billions, with which I could afford some former special forces bodyguards. And house guards for when I'm not home.

I guess you don't understand that your answer actually backs up the reason why it shouldn't be allowed to happen.

Publishing his location in real time affects his safety in a country where any whacko with a prior criminal history can get a gun. There certainly are plenty of people with serious grudge against Musk.

The data isn't "completely public". It takes non-trivial skill and effort to access this data.

I sure don't know how to do it.

It significantly rises the bar from "a whacko" to "a whacko with technical skills to access FAA monitoring system"

ADS-B is literally public data. There are several public exchanges that provide feeds without filtering and any person with one hour of time can access this data in real-time.

When some billionare buy private jet he is aware about fact that his jet can be easily tracked. If person decide to be a public figure he have to deal with fact that he'll be tracked around.

If he closes that guy's account, that would be egregiously hypocritical. But I don't see anything wrong with merely offering somebody money to shut up.