He is ultimately only looking out for his own interest and will say and do whatever he considers in the moment to advance his own goals.
Fans who think he is anti-woke or pro-free speech are naïve to think he stands for rock solid principles… he is only projecting those characteristics to manipulate to get what he wants.
I'm no fan, but this does pass the 'would probably do this too' test. As, I could see this being a recommendation from one's personal security team.
Not to mention a doxing that is my understanding violation of T's policy. But yes, you then have to ban Gatesjet, Puinjet and so forth.
The free speech argument is kinda stale for me at least, it's easy to virture signal 'in the interest of free speech', but obviously there will always be some speech that is not acceptable (ie.. doxing, illegal)
https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/personal-info...
Twitter's policies define doxxing as the posting of private information that was not made publicly available by the owner. They also specifically allow "sharing information that is publicly available elsewhere, in a non-abusive manner".
ElonJet and all of the other similar bots tracking interesting aircraft are using information that is broadcast unencrypted by the aircraft itself to anyone within radio range (sometimes hundreds of miles) who has a compatible receiver (including the famous $15 RTL-SDR) and publicly shared through multiple aggregators like ADS-B Exchange, FlightAware, and FlightRadar24.
This data is legally required to be broadcast, so it's definitely not private, and it's definitely publicly available elsewhere.
Elon would probably argue that it was abusive, but that's a lot more subjective. As far as I'm aware the account never tweeted anything but the facts of his jet's movements.
Musk didn’t make the data available so we can discount that.
> They also specifically allow "sharing information that is publicly available elsewhere, in a non-abusive manner".
Yes. Sharing information to make people track a person’s movements could be considered abusive.
I suspect this is a mistake though and Musk will have twitter re enable the account.
Did you miss the part where this data is legally required to be broadcast openly? This isn't private information, so whether or not Elon wants it to be shared is irrelevant.
> Yes. Sharing information to make people track a person’s movements can be considered abusive.
The account isn't tracking Elon's movements. It's tracking his jet's movements, which again are legally required to be publicly broadcast by the very jet being tracked. Aside from the time he's actually on the jet, the extent that this allows a person to track his movements is "he's probably somewhere within the general region served by whatever airport the plane is at" which is not exactly a significant privacy issue nor unusual for anyone of sufficient celebrity.
He always has the choice to not fly everywhere by private jet, which I believe was the entire original point of this bot. Making a note of the carbon impact of his choice to fly all over while promoting himself as a leader in reducing carbon footprint. There was a whole thing for a while with calling out a variety of celebrities for the same thing, just Elon was the only one who took it personally.
> I suspect this is a mistake though and Musk will have twitter re enable the account.
Given that the head of the company has a known public vendetta against this particular account and it was just the other day publicized that direct Musk subordinates were involved in "shadowbanning" it, and we know for a fact that Twitter has systems to flag accounts for special treatment such as Musk's previous promise to not ban it, this really doesn't pass the smell test.
What's more likely, that after all that they somehow accidentally banned both this account and later the operator's account, or that Musk got angry and changed his mind?
https://twitter.com/ElonJet/status/1603166460746104833
Twitter has changed their policies to not allow posting of same-day location information even if it's from public sources.
https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1603165959669354496
That seems to confirm that this was intentional and one of two things happened:
1. Someone jumped the gun and started enforcing the new policy before it was public, entirely coincidentally only enforcing it against this specific user's accounts before realizing their error but doing nothing to undo or even acknowledge it for hours after. 2. Someone in a position of substantial power made an arbitrary move and then changed the policy to justify their actions after the fact.
I know which one of those two I'd bet on.
No, I specifically pointed out the first part mentions data not shared by the person in the first case. You missed that.
> The account isn't tracking Elon's movements.
It’s literally called Elonjet. It’s not about anyone else except Musk.
> which again are legally required to be publicly broadcast by the very jet being tracked.
Again, abusive use of public data is against the Terms of Service. Please read the Terms of Service.
In what universe is "the person's aircraft is actively broadcasting this information" not data shared by the person? Just because they don't want to share it and are legally compelled to do so doesn't mean they aren't sharing it. That policy is about data not normally, legally, or intentionally shared.
> It’s literally called Elonjet. It’s not about anyone else except Musk.
It's literally called Elonjet. It tracks Elon's jet. Not him personally.
The bot posts when the aircraft takes off and when it lands, so even if he is on the aircraft at the time that information is almost immediately stale. The moment he leaves the airport it's nothing more than "There's a reasonable chance Elon is somewhere in the same metro area as his plane"
> Again, abusive use of public data is against the Terms of Service. Please read the Terms of Service.
The bot is not abusive, it's there to make a point about Elon's carbon emissions versus his public claims of environmental concern by displaying his use of inefficient private jet travel. That was a thing for a while with a lot of celebrities, but only one of them threw such a fit about it that it remained in the public's attention.
Remember that this bot was up for ages, with Elon publicly whining about it, Elon fans reporting it regularly, and I have no doubt he was bringing it up in private conversations with Twitter higher ups once he became involved. Are you telling me that you honestly believe this account and all of its related accounts were posting content that blatantly violated ToS that entire time and was allowed to remain open just because?
Note as well that the final banning came along with a (notably after the fact) change in policy to explicitly ban these sorts of accounts. If it was so blatantly against the ToS why would that be needed?
They "accidentally" shadowbanned the account. When caught they decided to just fuck it and ban the account completely - it was no accident.
People are all over the place morally/politically/how they treat people, even within non-random groups like billionaires. Better to differentiate between the good and bad behaviors specifically so people strive to do better.
On the other hand, Musk's personality is way out of the range of normality, in a bad way. He's narcissistic, psychopatic, manipulative, pathologically dishonest, cruel.
And he's always been like this, although perhaps with money and power he's starting to lose the self-control necessary to keep the mask on. I'm kind of proud that I realized who he was in early 2018, which was before any of the big scandals (e.g. pedo guy, funding secured, ...).
Biden has consistently lied throughout his entire political career to the point that it's been a running joke for decades. He doesn't even know when he's lying - he still repeats lies that he was publicly called out on a decade or more ago.
Trump lies to make people like him and pay attention to him. Biden lies compulsively.
> He quietly became the most progressive president in history
What a bizarre claim. He literally just overruled a union strike vote so an industry claiming record profits wouldn't have to give its employees sick days.
> What a bizarre claim
Your recency bias is showing. More overtly progressive legislation has been passed during his term than any other president. Like it is absolutely insane (meant positively) the amendments to Title IX that explicitly protect lgbt folks and he is threatening taking away funding from schools who ignore them. Like god damn that’s the opposite of posturing.
Obama would have been called the literal antichrist with 24/7 news coverage for months if he did that but this is the norm for Biden.
I have no idea if it’s purposeful on his part or if people are just burnt out on politics but just doing it and keeping out of the news cycle has been working out really well for him. He will probably get votes just from people who have been enjoying being able to tune out for a bit.
Interesting view. I don't really see the new amendments to Title IX as any more "overtly progressive" as the original amendment. It's just an adjustment to definitions to recognize some more people who are typically discriminated against (and to whom we believe that is unjust). The concept is really no different.
It seems obvious to me that he's a standard very online right-wing reactionary. People don't want to believe it because he's the electric cars and solar panels guy, but the new reactionary right doesn't care about climate change denialism anymore.
This idea that it's only the left that has changed, in an era where we saw the supporters of a losing candidate invade the US's Capitol building and an increase in far right terrorism, is just so bizarre.
Please, back up your claims with actual evidence. And I specifically mentioned Musk, Sacks and Armstrong, so please produce evidence of far right people they are amplifying.
And if you are about to say Ron Desantis, he's a pretty middle of the road Republican by the standards of about 2010, so just because the woke left calls him far right in 2022 is pretty meaningless at this point. Oh, and he didn't ban saying gay by the way.
And also do a bit of research on what negative effects of lockdowns we are currently experiencing.
No one is suggesting this is all faucis fault, musk isn’t either, but he conflict of interest is highly suspicious and shouldn’t be ignored.
It doesn't stop at pronouns though does it. This is the real problem, and how we've ended up with men in women's prisons, women's shelters, women's locker rooms, women's sports. Children being medically and surgically abused in the name of gender affirmation. And vast swathes of censorship and gaslighting to try to bully the populace into complying.
Let's not pretend that this is all a kerfuffle around pronouns. It is not, and never has been.
But now that I understand this, it does seem to be a slippery slope. At first it's just the water fountains, buses, and lunch counters. But before you know it, miscegenation is common and the presidency isn't even out of reach. And of course, vast swathes of censorship and gaslighting to try to bully the populace into complying.
I'm going to share your thoughts with my oldest friend, currently existing under the delusion that h̶i̶s̶ her seemingly well-adjusted and unassuming life is not the threat to society it clearly is. Thank you for doing your part to fight back against people like h̶i̶m̶ her.
I appreciate your gentle feedback on my relationship to women's rights, as well as your your heartfelt stand against bullying. Although I struggle to see how my uninsightful previous comment had anything to do with that topic, I can only assume you've identified something in me to which I've been blinded by my unfortunate grandfathered affection for a living, breathing trans human being.
My tragic lack of self-awareness is perhaps because I personally witnessed years of merciless bullying during our shared childhood in one of the most conservative areas of Texas. You see, when I compare my memory of that poorly fitted kid to the successful, kind, and well-loved person they are today, when I consider their deeply personal, hard-fought struggle towards self-acceptance that I myself witnessed, it is easy to miss just how insidiously they are, in fact, perverting our society to its certain doom. So subtle is this agenda of destruction that one might be forgiven for thinking it doesn't even exist at all.
Going forward I will do my best to defend women's rights by demanding that my friend accept upon h̶i̶m̶s̶e̶l̶f̶ herself the mantle of traditional femininity, no matter what h̶e̶ she may think about that or how cruelly it will be received by the sort of people who tormented h̶i̶m̶ her in our formative years. You've truly made a difference today.
Despite your insistence to the contrary, nobody I'd associate with wants anyone to be getting sexual gratification by leering at others in dressing rooms. Because believe it or not, we're good people who don't tolerate sex pests. That has nothing at all to do with gender or sexual orientation and everything to do with not being a shitty person.
Sadly, it's beyond obvious that the right's performative outrage over men in women's dressing rooms never really had anything to do with protecting women, and everything to do with ostracizing trans folks. I'll leave you with a quote from a guy recently welcomed back to Twitter by Musk himself:
"I’ll go backstage before a show, and everyone’s getting dressed and ready and everything else. And you know, no men are anywhere. I’m allowed to go in because I’m the owner of the pageant. And, therefore, I’m inspecting it. I’m inspecting it. I want to make sure everything is good."
He went on, as if he was in the dressing room, "'Is everyone okay?' You know, they’re standing there with no clothes. And you see these incredible looking women. And so I sort of get away with things like that."
And there's more than enough evidence of him doing just that. [0]
[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-right-wing-extremi...
Americans are so completely uneducated about politics that they think Biden or Obama are on the far-left, its remarkable, they aren't even social democrats.
Recognizing his actions are contradictory requires a higher level of abstraction.
The data is public, jesus christ. Though Musk-fans will eat this up.
This idea is widely acknowledged, with key example being the EU's "right to be forgotten". Which upon request removes personal information from search results, whilst it typically does not remove said info from the underlying individual websites. The very principle here is that a republication (search result) very much can be a security/privacy risk.
Republishing public flight data is closer in spirit to retweeting a public hearing announcement. Usually, at least one party to a hearing would prefer that it be secret, but that data is public for a reason
There should be a banner on the account or tweets with a justification or at a minimum an explanation for shadowbanning. Otherwise it's easy to abuse.
It has become increasingly common on social media where a post that does not directly call for violence, still triggers all kinds of real world harassment. Musk himself is guilty of this too.
The right to be forgotten is not designed for high profile public figures, quite the opposite. Public figures in a way are always screwed from a privacy/reputation point of view.
Instead, the right to be forgotten is to protect common people. Maybe as a teenager when drunk you posted something stupid on social media. Which shouldn't haunt you for the rest of your life. Maybe a nude photo got leaked. Maybe you made a mistake at work, and don't want to be unhirable for the rest of your life.
Hard to see how that applies to future flight plans for a private jet!
You make people aware of data that they may not have been aware of before. Do this to a large audience and it only takes 1 to be triggered into a harmful idea.
Restrictions on republishing data always have limiting principles (at least in US and EU law).
(I don’t agree with that, but I spent weeks arguing with Musk supporters about this very fact. Now all of a sudden they are saying “it’s his right to do whatever he wants with Twitter”, which I agree with. But then why did Musk buy Twitter in the first place? Well now we know: to do whatever he wanted with it, not to champion free speech rights! Which is exactly what people were worried about! It’s all so frustrating…)
The obvious response to anyone who says this is that the previous owners (and hence management appointed by said owners) similarly had that right… so why be upset about them - ha because their decisions didn’t align with you. Juts be careful, while Musk’s choices today might match your world view you should know that he only looks out for himself and will do whatever is his best interest and so the projection of being fundamentally pro speech is a mirage.
Right now, you conclude that this was a personal vengeance by Musk himself. Whilst this conclusion isn't verified at all. We don't know why the suspension is there. It's in fact unlikely a personal action as Musk has reinstated some of his biggest enemies before.
The "free speech absolutist" quote is bullshit. It's a random interview quote taken out of context, that never applied to running Twitter. You can be a free speech absolutist as a person whilst not applying this to Twitter. For the simple reason that you can't. It doesn't work with advertisers and is downright illegal in some jurisdictions, like the EU. Musk has readily admitted that and aims to "piss off both political extremes equally" whilst "elevating the silent 80%".
He's also refused to do so based on personal feelings. https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/21/tech/alex-jones-twitter-ban/
> Musk has readily admitted that and aims to "piss off both political extremes equally" whilst "elevating the silent 80%".
Sure. He's also claimed "funding secured" to bring Tesla private before, which was found in court to be a lie. I'm not sure why you'd take his statements at face value.
The next thing you do is to make him guilty by association. Something was done before (in a different context with different circumstances) hence that is evidence that this case is exactly the same. Which too is speculation and narrative.
Eternal damnation is also a way to build narrative.
It's all narrative and zero facts. I never said that I take his statement at face value. I said that I would refrain from judgement until the reason for the suspension is given. Which is very basic human courtesy.
No; I knew he wouldn't actually do that. Its value is to demonstrate the hypocrisy of Musk's approach so far.
> The next thing you do is to make him guilty by association.
With whom did I associate him?
> I said that I would refrain from judgement until the reason for the suspension is given. Which is very basic human courtesy.
The more times someone lies to you, the less you should "refrain from judgement" on new claims.
And if it's never given? Are we to just refrain from judgement forever?
This line is pretty commonly used to cover for "let's just stop talking about it until it's old news"
Yet, he consciously chose to suppress the speech which very marginally increased the security risk for the richest man in the world, who can probably afford to hire every security firm in the world at the same time, but considers the act of Twitter not promoting such speech which targets marginalized people most of whom couldn't afford any private security, a huge affront to free speech.
We don't know this. The reason for the suspension is not given. It may as well be part of the big bot purge.
Other than that, I very much agree with you that Musk as well as any account with an enormous amount of followers should very carefully pick their words. Even opinions within the limits of free speech that you and I could express, have a way different effect when you have a 100M followers.
Why give Musk the benefit of the doubt in this way? The @elonjet account was a properly registered automated account going through the Twitter API, it should never be caught up in a bot purge of inauthentic accounts.
So they’re happy to embrace what they think of as say a concept like freedom, even if it is the opposite.
I've searched for "Elon Musk jet callsign" but apart from the mentioned twitter account, I couldn't easily find out which one it was.
The one covered in the NYT (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/03/technology/elon-musk-jet-...), Musk has publicly tweeted about (https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589414958508691456), offered $50k to remove (https://www.protocol.com/elon-musk-flight-tracker), and of a plane registered to "Falcon Landing LLC" at "1 Rocket Road, Hawthorne CA" (https://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/Search/NNumberResul...)?
C'mon. We know it's his jet.
Yes, we know. Because of the twitter account.
My point is that it would be much harder to know which airplane is Elon's jet if it weren't for the twitter account.
Which goes to the gp's point that even if the data is public, making it easily accessible increases Elon's personal safety risk.
That said, the NYT story does seem to make my point a bit moot. In any case, I wasn't aware of that story, and it didn't come up when I searched for "Elon Musk jet callsign".
Although I would guess a determined attacker could find it out given sufficient research.
You don't have to be determined; a college freshman on a lark found Musk, Gates, etc. and made Twitter accounts. This information is intentionally public; you can browse recent plane registrations at https://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/Search/RecentRegist..., export it to CSV, with full name and address of each owner.
I get a text message whenever my dad is seen in the air.
@elonjet isn't the problem here. (IMO, there isn't a problem.)
Publishing someone's personal jet callsign should be treated similar to publishing someone's license plate number, phone number, or home address.
And an organization like Twitter should have clear policies on that.
https://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/Search/NNumberResul...
Musk is a public figure, using public airspace, with a legally required ADS-B device that broadcasts its location, altitude, etc. to the public.
Perhaps you're thinking of home purchase records? Real estate title transfers are public, so if you buy a house in your own name, there will be a public record of that. But you can move, and AFAIK there is no annotation in the record of whether you intend to inhabit or rent out the purchased property.
If the private citizen is a renter there is another database used by rental companies that operates similar to a credit rating system, the name escapes me, but it's open to a large number of people to query. That system shows all current and prior residence of renters as well as missed payments and even has notes for problematic renters including but not limited to late payments, evictions, property damage, etc...
Several years ago I hear a guy on the radio telling people to be very careful. There was a place where people could get your name, your address, even your phone number, all for free... if they knew where to look.
Listeners called in, some incensed that the MC/DJ whatever was even talking about it.
After a few minutes, he exposed the secret. It was... the phone book.
When Kanye was banned for posting a swastika, people spread a rumor that it was for posting a picture of Elon looking fat.
So we have a history of there being more to it here.
Maybe we should actually find out what the account has posted recently, or see if it was a mistake, first?
Yes, because Elon has certainly earned all the benefit of the doubt.
Also, what did "we" find?
I'm glad you understand the history here.
https://twitter.com/jxcksweeney/status/1602354433807061070?s...
The last thing they said was Twitter backtracked on 'deamplifying' his account. I guess maybe something changed.
Will you change your opinion of Musk if this ban turned out to be a mistake?
Did you change previously your opinion of Musk the last time "Elon bans someone because they insulted him" turned out to be untrue?
The @elonjet account hasn't posted anything outside the norm; I was a follower. Anyone who'd like to provide evidence otherwise is welcome to do so.
I don't expect it to stop others though
> My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589414958508691456?s=46...