Basically, his entire tenure so far has been "free speech for me and the accounts that were rightfully banned for violating the TOS!" in public, and then "we'll deboost anyone who doesn't pay me a subscription" and "let's selectively release internal comms in a misleading way to make normal company operation in good faith seem like a liberal conspiracy."

Also, if you read the twitter files, the enforcement was fairly lopsided. Look what happened to @libsoftiktok -- constant labels and suspensions even though they admitted that they couldn't actually find rule breaks. They just didn't like the "intent". And when that account got doxxed -- which is dangerous and malicious -- the company did nothing.

I don't think you need to call it a liberal conspiracy, it's just very clear that twitter has/had a very particular bias based on the facts alone.

you know Elon was running the company when this happened, right? which makes it completely orthogonal to your point.

Seems like an important detail to consider!

If you turn a blind eye to the behaviour of someone you agree with, even if they're doing something that is against the rules (or the spirit of the rules) but you come down hard on someone else for actions that are the same (or lesser); then it's a problem for me.

But "they got suspended 6 times for legitimate reasons and then the continued to behave badly while staying just inside the written bounds of the rules" isn't really a story.

Like the Wikipedia page does a good job of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libs_of_TikTok#:~:text=terro.... Summarizing the suspensions, which were for misgendering and harassing trans people, primarily. That's the majority of what LTT produces, banal anti-trans propaganda. If you think that's funny, well, that's on you.

"Wikipedia Is Badly Biased" by founder Larry Sanger: https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/

To put this another way: they're providing a useful service to document the absolute nonsense that some trans activists spout.

But on the broader topic of what the drag queens are up to, just look at this for example: https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1581050195399561217 - why should this type of performance be considered acceptable to show to kids?

I'm glad this account is holding these people to account.

Yeah, I'm not convinced.

The original comment is referencing Twitter having donated to Democrats. This would be a 'major' donor in my estimation.

And you never answered my ultimate question -- is your anecdote particularly useful here?

This is the crux of our disagreement. You are considering "Twitter" as a singular entity making donations, while I consider employees of Twitter as individual entities, 98% of whom donated to Democrats. I believe the latter is the context, while you do not. If you're correct on the context, then I would agree. As I mentioned before, it's very common for organizations/big business to donate to both parties.

I would direct you to the grandparent where the context was set:

> So we have a company headquartered in SF, and I think something like 98% of twitter's political donations went to democrats, and the employees acted as constant activists whenever the executives didn't take action against high level conservatives (I'll leave aside whether that action was justified or not).

That reads to me as 'Twitter the organization', not 'Twitter the people in the organization'. I suppose it could be either, but I have never heard that kind of wording for a company as its constituent employees instead of as a monolith. I am open to a different interpretation if you can guide me through it and it seems plausible to me, but if there is no reconciling the disparate readings then I suppose we shall have to admit to an impasse.

It's becoming more common. I wouldn't say it's fully "common" yet.

I think the most public example was the recent gubernatorial election in Illinois. Incumbent Governor Pritzker donated money to a very far-right candidate, Darrin Baley, so that he would get the Republican nomination, and push moderate voters toward Pritzker in the general election.

It was all very well documented in Illinois newspapers during the election, and the New York Times did at least one piece about it, too.

The Times also noted that after the election, Biden gave a speech where he made a statement that this was not an acceptable practice. He didn't call out Pritzker by name, but if you were following the Illinois election, you know who he was talking about.

I personally think the concept of stochastic terrorism is a rhetorical trick to associate legal speech with terrorism, but I think the argument applies just as well to ElonJet.

This is an interesting term that is worth exploring. A problem with it is that it could apply to huge swaths of people and organizations, e.g. Fox News, the Republican Party, CNN, Democratic Socialists, etc

Basically anything that you don’t like is now considered terrorism.

Free speech is completely dead under this logic.

She was instigating acts of extreme violence. Surely you’re joking. Or tell us how you really feel about certain extremely vulnerable & marginalized members of our society more, I guess.

If you’re trying to insinuate the Charles Manson defense, which has been a common theme regarding one side of the political spectrums views on LibsofTikTok, I do not particularly wish to engage in any further discussion.

I follow that account and have never seen any instigation of any violence of any kind. More likely, a certain "side of the political spectrum" has decided that redefining language is a good idea, and making anything they disagree with "violence" seems to be a defining characteristic of that group. You added "extreme violence" to double down on it, but faking outrage doesn't help the discussion any.

It isn't true, it's sophistry.

Not the kind of left that the rest of the world see's as left, but that weird US-coastal left leaning that sometimes depicts some races as inhuman and other races as infantalised.

So believe me when I say: What Elon is doing is not better, it's more of the same, but towards the right wing and his interests.

The answer to bias is not bias in another direction, the answer is neutrality, and he has proven he can't be neutral.

Glenn Greenwald:

"This thread proves 3 things:

1) Twitter execs were regularly meeting with FBI over what to censor.

2) Twitter's censorship was almost 100% aligned with the Dem Party.

3) Twitter's chief censors were deranged ideologues abusing their power over our discourse to silence dissent."

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1601591994165256192

If Greenwald isn't credible enough, I don't know what to say.

I don't know people expect moderation to work, but it's inherently messy and imperfect because humans are messy and imperfect, and past a certain point you always end up having to trust the instincts and judgement of moderators.

As someone who has moderated large group before, my main reaction is "this stuff is surprising to people?"

The bias and hand wringing about censoring people whom they even admitted hadn't actually broken any rules disclosed in by Taibbi and Weiss deserved no charity. It was worse than people had imagined.

And you're just going to ignore this part?

>2) Twitter's censorship was almost 100% aligned with the Dem Party.

That's not "moderation". That's "partisan censorship".

The text shared was this:

===== Site Policy Recommendation Site Policy recommends placing @LibsOfTiktok ([LTT] 1.3M followers, not verified) in a 7-day timeout at the account level meaning, not for a specific Tweet] based on the account's continued pattern of indirectly violating Twitter's Hateful Conduct Policy by tweeting content that either leads to or intends to incite harassment against individuals and institutions that support LGBTQ communities. At this time, Site Policy has not found explicitly violative Tweets, which would result in a permanent suspension of the account. This type of enforcement action [repeated 7-day timeouts at the account-level] will not lead to permanent suspension, however: should LTT engage in any other direct Tweet-level violations of any of Site Policy's policies, we will move forward with permanent suspension.

Assessment Since its most recent timeout, while LTT has not directly engaged in behavior violative of the Hateful Conduct policy, the user has continued targeting individuals/allies/supporters of the LGBTQIA+ community for alleged misconduct. The targeting of at least one of these institutions =====

It’s inaccurate to say that LoTT didn’t violate the rules. LoTT didn’t directly violate the rules. Weiss chose to cut the text off before getting to the description of what happened as a result of LoTT’s tweets.

So at this point you can ask a more nuanced question: what do you do about indirect violations which you believe in good faith have potentially harmful results? Such as, say, bomb threats?

I’m not going to try and answer that here because it’s a really difficult question and I don’t think we’d reach an answer. I will say that I think it’s important to acknowledge that the question itself is reasonable. The Twitter Files fail to acknowledge that.

I will also note that Weiss selectively quoted the text in her screenshot. “Since its most recent timeout, while LTT has not directly engaged in behavior violative of the Hateful Conduct policy…” became “LTT has not directly engaged in behavior violative of the Hateful Conduct policy.” That changes the meaning of the sentence and obscures the question I raised above. I would also like to know if Twitter determined that LoTT directly engaged in such behavior before the most recent timeout; it seems very relevant.

Finally, we have no idea how lopsided the enforcement was because we don’t have the complete dataset. Showing us a handful of cases selected by unclear means is hardly enough data to form conclusions!

Was there much interesting in there? I mostly remember it opening with the Dems having a direct line for reporting, with the examples shown of it being used being mostly nudes of Hunter&company, that i assume won't surprise anyone when being acted upon. Now there shouldn't be direct lines, but a fair report&enforcement system instead. But i somehow doubt that will get any better under musk...

Just look at some of the inflammatory replies to your comment that just mentions it. There's more going on with the semantics of the phrase being used to irrationally rile people up to outrage, rather than actually being about the definition of free speech.

It's all part of the game where they get to tell a story about how they're successful because they are smarter or more deserving or better than the rest of us, while the reality is that they are robbing us blind and making sure that we have no choice but to work for them to make them rich.

Events like the Panama Papers leaks are terrifying to them because is exposes how universally corrupt the rich and powerful are and how badly they are using their wealth to screw us. If that kind of information becomes commonplace then people would realize that our fight isn't between ideological left vs right, it is, and always has been rich vs poor.

They've been so used to being above the law and above the rules it drives them crazy that they can actually be held to account somewhere. Most of them still get away with far more than the average person would ever be able to (see "Do Not Take Action on User Without Consulting With SIP-PES"), but even that is not enough.

What has really happened is that a major political group has gone from having views basically supporting the status quo power structure ("conservative") to having views at odds with the status quo power structure ("reactionary" to use Moldbug's own label). They're perceiving that their messages are suddenly being censored by the mainstream media, and chalking it up to a conspiracy with the other political party rather than the longstanding mutually interested oligarchic behavior it has always been. The censorship dynamic of mass media (including social mass media) isn't a shock to anybody that came up having politics significantly at odds with the mainstream power structure.

(I suspect there's a similar pan-political shock for the generation that isn't old enough to have had much experience being dominated by broadcast mass media and grew up with social media primacy, but before social media had really been captured by the incumbent power structure)

Of course, this is absurd, because dropping dox on someone is one of the easiest way to censor them.

Conversely, a lot of actual free speech arguments have been recouched in the language of social justice purely for the sake of not getting confused for the far right. When you hear phrases like "hearing marginalized voices", you don't think of free speech. But it is a free speech argument: due to past acts of violence, a group of people are not allowed to speak, so we should let them speak.

And this isn't the first time this has happened, either. Remember that quote about censorship and the Internet[0]? That itself was propaganda for the hacker movement. The Internet does not actually interpret censorship as damage, nor can it "route" around it. Hackers do that, individually, and at a non-zero cost.

I personally think this particular rhetorical shell game has enabled some of big tech's abuses today. It's difficult to sell alternatives to big tech because that requires making a free speech argument, which means a lot of extra work on agreeing if we're talking about free speech[0], free speech[1], or free speech[2]. Because at a minimum, the Internet is not usable without a minimum level of justifiable censorship: i.e. banning spammers, deleting dox, and shutting down DDoS services. That requires making value judgments about what is speech, what is abuse, and what is violence.

[0] "The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it"

[1] "It's about ethics in gaming journalism"

[2] "Listen and believe", "silence is violence", and so on

> extreme far right realized they could rephrase their violence as speech

And in your post that became:

> It's actually the far left that characterizes speech as violence.

"Rephrasing violence as speech" has approximately the meaning of "pretending violence is actually speech"; "characterizing speech as violence" has the meaning of "pretending speech is violence", ie, the exact opposite.

These two claims don't contradict eachother.

When anyone dox'es someone with the intent that they are harmed, that's inciting violence.

Doxing a [insert minority group leader] is an example of "the right" using violence against someone and pretending it's free speech.

I think more people need to hear this.

The right is not alone in this issue, but they certainly have more criminal convictions resulting from violence than I can remember "the left" having.

> normal company operation in good faith

But it wasn't "normal company operation" because they completely disregarded preexisting company policy for dealing with political figures. Here are political figures that they didn't ban (who were inciting violence)

> 20. In June 2018, Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei tweeted, “#Israel is a malignant cancerous tumor in the West Asian region that has to be removed and eradicated: it is possible and it will happen.”

> 21. In October 2020, the former Malaysian Prime Minister said it was “a right” for Muslims to “kill millions of French people.”

But they banned the former president. What they were doing wasn't "normal company operation", it was a bunch of power tripping people in upper management (like Roth) who "took it upon themselves" to disregard preexisting company policies for some odd reason

You can dislike Trump/Elon/et al, but the "normal company operation" bit is an outright distortion of what actually happened

source: https://nitter.net/bariweiss/status/1602370518585221120#m

Have you also considered that there is a huge difference between Khamenei and PMs saber rattling online against other countries (which was actually consistent with Twitter's then current policy of treating world leaders, Trump included, with a lenient hand) vs. a president not condemning and (very likely encouraging) an attempt by his own supporters seeking to overturn an election as said attempt was going on?

So not condemning something (that is to say, choosing not to speak) and "very likely encouraging" (as opposed to actually encouraging) is somehow worse than calling for outright genocide?

Your comment isn't really clear here. Are denying that the two comments I posted aren't contributing to violence that was actively going on at the time of their posting?

And with regard to this:

> Have you considered that many people here actually work in companies and know how they work, meaning they don't need a media source to know that the Twitter files are bogus? In fact, most people here have brains and can think for themselves, and we actually don't rely on a media outlet for all our takes.

thanks for the copypasta :)

Hopefully people realize that trusting $COMPANY will never deliver you anything good. We either regulate the things we care about, or let stuff like this happen. Either way, the world keeps spinning.

It's a balancing act between individual and social rights (individual in this case being twitter), but these companies very explicitly build to scale to be a sort of "town hall" and in doing so start having very large social influence the likes of which no one in history has ever had.

When they get to this scale there has to be extra responsibility here for the good of society as a whole.

I think a bazaar or carnival is a better metaphor, since a town hall is a brick and mortar thing that lasts into posterity, whereas a social network is more temporary

> When they get to this scale there has to be extra responsibility here for the good of society as a whole.

Or people could just not use the service and move onto a different one? There's nothing permanent about the current social networks that are popular right now

And people can just move to a different town, that doesn't stop us from having laws in place to guarantee rights in the current town.

Town got pulled in when I pointed out that rights over speech wrt to these places still exist even though someone can move to a different town (to presumably gain access to a different town hall).

Towns are municipalities, twitter is a private company. The more I look at this metaphor, the less it makes sense

Again, the biggest issue here is the public misconception that Twitter (or any of the internet) is a benevolent platform. Legislation cannot change that.

Nobody is above the law, not the meek nor the mighty.

aka, we already have precedence for this sort of thing.

Or an alternative: people can use social media that doesn't suck whenever something like this happens, and the market forces will punish the stupidity on twitter or any other platform that forgets what's owed to its userbase

I have no idea why your first instinct is to regulate when twitter doesn't have a monopoly and there are several very similar alternatives that are growing in popularity

That was the company policy.

Public figures were largely exempt from the rules except when their tweet was egregious.

Not sure why you think this is some conspiracy when it was blatantly obvious.

So are you saying that the two tweets I posted above aren't egregious?

> Not sure why you think this is some conspiracy when it was blatantly obvious.

I can't find that allegation anywhere in my comment. What was there was the obvious inconsistency between not banning e.g. the Ayatollah for the above comment, but banning the former president

Can you find any tweets from the former president that were even comparable to the two tweets I posted?

Trump was banned for inciting an insurrection which is illegal.

So we should ban everyone who's suspected of doing something illegal then? They don't even have to be charged with any crimes, we just have to be convinced that they did something illegal in order to have grounds for banning them

So yes, bans can be done without any legal action. And really that's how it should be for the sake of proper function.

Otherwise I could just spam HN over and over, until HN actually managed to sue me and win the lawsuit. Can you imagine how long that would take?

Mind you, spam is very much free speech, so it'd be interesting to see which law that would be breaking.

This isn't about "right wingers" or any of these braindead arguments about "moderation being in the public interest", my point was that saying what Roth and others did was "normal company operation" is an outright lie and anyone who's actually paying attention knows this

Is there any public information about how twitter handled the two examples you provided at the end there? Do we know for sure they actively chose not to take any actions?

If not, I'm not sure it is fair to claim they completely ignored them. They may have limited their reach via some kind of shadow banning. Action like that is harder to notice than an account ban.

Also, since your examples predate the particular ban we are discussing, do we know for sure there weren't policy changes in between. Perhaps even because of examples like the ones you list.

Personally, I wonder if Twitter might have a more American-centric view of the world and a higher sense of urgency for "events at home", so to speak. That could go some way to explaining what seems to be selective enforcement of their terms of service.

Where's the hypocrisy? Musk said he wanted to broaden the speech allowed on the platform, not allow speech of all kinds.

> "let's selectively release internal comms in a misleading way to make normal company operation in good faith seem like a liberal conspiracy."

Maybe try getting your info from a non-leftwing source. There has been plenty of damning info coming from these internal comms.

> By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law.

Was the account violating any law?

Even back in April he was not saying he was only going to censor illegal speech. Anyways, since Elon acquired twitter he's made it a major talking point to say that twitter is still moderating by the same rules as before: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1588538640401018880

"Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists."

The ElonJet account was violating rules for leaking internal company communications. Is that type of censorship going "far beyond the law?" I don't think so. Internal leaks can damage a company and the company should therefore protect itself. If anything, Twitter could be legally liable to shareholders for failing to do so.

On the other hand, blacklisting Dr. Jay Bhattacharya for saying things about Covid that turned out to be far more correct than what the CDC was saying at the same time is indeed going far beyond the law and also harming all of society: https://www.foxnews.com/media/twitter-files-confirm-stanford...

It would be useful if Musk adopted transparency and shared the rationale behind this banning, along with all internal communications regarding it.

https://mastodon.social/@JxckS/109513788818540405

There is an explanation:

Violating our rules against platform manipulation and spam.

You may not use Twitter's services in a manner intended to artificially amplify or suppress information or engage in behavior that manipulates or disrupts people's experience on Twitter.

“Artificially amplify” probably covers it, since he wrote code to amplify information that was otherwise tricky to view. Interesting precedent, though.

The rules and policies covering personal information have been changed to include “live location information, including information shared on Twitter directly or links to 3rd-party URL(s) of travel routes, actual physical location, or other identifying information that would reveal a person’s location, regardless if this information is publicly available.”

https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/personal-info...

I have confirmed via the Wayback Machine that this change occurred within the last 48 hours.

I am going to be non-neutral now: what a dumb policy. That means you could report someone for posting a photo of a sporting event, because it identifies the location of the players. I’m not even totally against the concept but that is a terrible, terrible implementation.

Remember how the people deciding whether or not to ban Trump were relying on nuances and intent rather than trying to write iron-clad rules? This is why.

Musk claims an attempt was made to assault him: "Last night, car carrying lil X in LA was followed by crazy stalker (thinking it was me), who later blocked car from moving & climbed onto hood.

Legal action is being taken against Sweeney & organizations who supported harm to my family."

He specifically said he would not ban it as part of his commitment to free speech.

Everyone is energized by this situation because it's so obviously blatantly self serving.

"Violating [Twitter] rules against platform manipulation and spam."

This is textbook whataboutism, using Fox News no less. It's irrelevant to the discussion about Musk's hypocrisy on free speech, which you also ignored in your previous comment:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589414958508691456

They also never ignored "Musk's hypocrisy on free speech." Simply because he isn't being hypocritical here.

False

> using Fox News no less.

Speaking of irrelevant to the discussion, this little sentence fragment fits the bill.

> It's irrelevant to the discussion about Musk's hypocrisy on free speech,

False. I am comparing the type of speech that is "far beyond the law" that Elon Musk is now allowing versus the type of speech that he is not.

First I've heard of this. The ElonJet person was a Twitter employee then? What communications did they leak?

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589414958508691456

> "My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk"

So yes, that is pretty inconsistent with banning an account which did nothing illegal. Assuming it was Musk who issued it.

>from a non-leftwing source

Can you people stop going "left wing right wing" for one day and see things for what they are instead of this infantile black-white spiel?

If you agree its fine, would you apply the same reasoning to [favorite politician]? How about a bot that crowdsources the whereabouts of [politician] at any time?

Note that the account wasn't about the location of a specific person, but rather the (public) location of a specific aircraft (own/used by a specific person). It's not like someone was tailing Elon and reporting their every location - planes must broadcast their location through use of ADS-B. It is public information.

> If you agree its fine, would you apply the same reasoning to [favorite politician]?

Yes.

https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/equipadsb/privacy

Note also that FlightRadar24 and other ADS-B vendors are required by law to comply with FAA LADD, so airplane operators can request (demand, really) their information be scrubbed.

https://nbaa.org/aircraft-operations/security/privacy/limiti...

https://www.faa.gov/pilots/ladd

Flight tracking vendors that use FAA data are required by law to comply with LADD. Ones that run their own ADS-B networks and use no FAA data (e.g. ADSBexchange.com) are not.

Yes

>Would you like a social network that allows someone that doesn't like you to post your home address to millions of followers?

That's public data in my county whether I like it or not. Presumably that's where most of my junk mail comes from. It's annoying but I don't think it should be banned necessarily

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

https://landtransparency.ca/

Another example of something like this is the mugshot websites that post your mugshot (also public!) and spam in out in hopes of getting you to bribe them to take it down.

Don't the people who actually want to harm musk, and have the means to make it happen, have anyway the means to get the information they need to find him? If it's mildly obnoxious like having to look up land records, they'll just do that.

I genuinely don't see how posting the location of his plane is a "security risk." I don't understand why he gets this added layer of consideration as a person in the airport. They got security at the airport. He lands behind it, same as anyone. He comes through it and his security is in his hands and the hands of the local cops, same as anyone. What's the deal here?

I think, to be completely fair, that the perceived security issue is more that we have a loose idea of what city he might be in. This feels more like a privacy issue than a serious security issue.

I take it you are too young to remember phone books?

No.

What, like Air Force One? https://twitter.com/USAirForceVIP

Which they wouldn't do because the secret service isn't stupid. They know that current location has very little impact on security. It is future movements that allow you to plan an attack, which are closely guarded.

"By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law."

The information @ElonJet is publishing is publicly available. One interpretation says: if it's publicly available information, then preventing it being republished is censorship. Therefore Musk is breaking his own rule.

Another interpretation says: whilst it's freely-available information, publishing risks increased harm to Musk himself. I'm no expert on US law, but I'd imagine there's some sort of provision that protects against deliberately risking harm to someone. Assuming that's the case, Musk is being consistent with his own rule.

Given his public profile - and his desire/willingness/record of being provocative - I'd imagine most will adopt the former interpretation.

[0]: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1519036983137509376?lang...

As an example of what a jury has found to be true and imminent threat, Flip Benham's Save America organization was printed up and distributed "Wanted" posters, with the names and home addresses of doctors who provided abortion services, and put the posters up on the homes and around the neighborhoods of the doctors. Things that don't rise to that level of threat are protected by the 1st Amendment against government retaliation.

Musk is, of course, free to not follow the guidelines that the Government is required to. But by the same token, we have free speech rights and are free to criticize him, make fun of him, and otherwise denigrate him for being a lawless hypocrite who is actively promoting evil in the world.

Ordinary photographs constitute ample and often accidental documentation of where people were at any given time. Even if you assume consent (which is a real unfair assumption where people don't even know about posts being made about them), this would suppress a lot of information that is very clearly in the public interest; if I can get posts taken down that document I was doing a bad thing in a particular place, I have a lot of power to suppress evidence of my malfeasance.

The US's legal framework here makes a lot of compromises that make a lot of people unhappy, but if you dig into it, you can see why it's complicated: reasonable-sounding policies work their way to unreasonable results in various subsets of cases.

https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/personal-info...

If you make that claim and then enact censorious policies then you're plainly a liar.

Oh my god. That would be horrifying. Can you imagine?

https://mobile.twitter.com/potusschedbot

This is publicly available information.

What exactly is the safety threat with this twitter acct?

The account only posted the location of Elon's private jet, which I'm pretty confident is not a threat unless an attacker has a surface to air missile ready.

This entire premise is so very weak to me. Elon is famous and a public figure and it's his own choice that people have as much interest in him as they do. He does everything he can to be in the public eye. There are tons of plane tracking accounts or applications. There is even one that tracks AF1 which carries one of the most powerful and important people in the world.

And this isn't a location tracker. This account doesn't follow Elon around and Tweet where he's headed once he lands, how long he might be staying, where he went for lunch, etc. And Elon can use completely legal methods to reduce how much of this information is publicly available.

> Just because you can publish information like this doesn't mean it's ethical

And just because some actions MIGHT have negative outcomes doesn't mean they are unethical.

Elon has all the tools to avoid being tracked by a random flight tracking service. If he doesn't use those tools then he doesn't care that much about his privacy. He posts images of him sleeping in the Twitter HQ, which has a publicly listed address. We aren't talking about some powerless individual who is having big companies abuse their privacy.

I honestly was unaware, but it has been pointed out to me that Elon even said as much in a tweet from 11/6. He explicitly said it's a direct threat to his personal safety. Sure, in the same tweet he said he would allow the account to continue, but I think that's a perfectly fine thing to change your mind on. I would never wish anyone's safety be put at risk for a dumb Doxxing account in the name of free speech

"Having easy access to his whereabouts at all times" is hyperbole. Only his jet is being tracked, not his physical location at all times.

https://nitter.net/RMac18/status/1603113696263172096#m

But knowing when he leaves a city and arrives at another is half the battle. A bad actor who wants to do him harm now know he just landed back in Austin. So if they were planning an attack, they could then try follow him from the airport, find him at home, Twitter HQ et cetera.

And for the record, to me this isn't about Elon. I don't support any of those accounts. I don't care if it's Brad Pitt, Bezos, POTUS, or my next door neighbor, it's Doxxing and it shouldn't be tolerated.

This guy has been actively trying to make enemies to garner a few "hello there fellow kids" points, actively uses every trick in the book to make sure he not only has to pay zilch in taxes, but draws the maximum in benefits, being one of the richest people on the planet and continuously taking credit for things he at best funded, at worst didn't do anything for. Meanwhile he's throwing up a gigantic smokescreen and misleading people in ways that benefit his company while being disastrous for the environment, and has the gall to show his ideas as some kind of divine intellect.

An account functioning as an event hub for public information regarding his jet is about the least he has to worry about once the chickens come home to roost. If the location alone was that bad, he could give a warning and ask the account to only post climate-related info. These are the people shaming you at every corner and ready to push you under the bus the moment something dares to scratch their empire.

Nothing about their existence is ethical. People defending them under the guise of 'ethics' is exactly how they got there.

Singling out public information and publishing it to single out one person when there are safety and security implications is crossing the line distinctly into what we call doxxing.

Just curious, how long have you been on the internet?

Would you like an account like this to exist tracking everything you do?

It's quite an hyperbole to go from "tracking what city you airplane lands it" to "tracking everything you do"

Is poparazzi photography doxxing?

Is the White House press corp doxxing?

All this kid had to do was do a little more work: Track more celebrities and top dollar folks. Make it general. Maybe they'd converge on him, but at least Elon wouldn't have a leg to stand on. Instead this kid does minimal work, it goes viral, and everyone is crying about it. Pathetic.

I'm loving the selective memories so many folks have here, acting as though they are remotely consistent with application of ethics.

I'm genuinely curious because if it takes a few steps and knowing a couple of bits of information then maybe that is a problem. I mean, the FAA records or wherever they're getting the information doesn't have it labeled "Elon's Jet", does it?

The Twitter account likely makes it dead simple for any bloke off the street to know where it is.

https://opencorporates.com/companies/us_ca/201113110103

The public owns the airspace and if you fly through it you need to register yourself.

Quit carrying water for the billionaires, they don’t need the help.

The information about his plane's location is already public. Posting it to twitter just makes it spread further. Also, a plane's location isn't very useful. Even doxxing someone's permanent address (not that elon has one) is a pretty minimal threat to their life.

A plane's location is some of the less dangerous speech allowed.

The account republishes publicly available information. I'd hardly consider that doxxing. Flight data isn't private.

Elon pointed to the existence of the account as demonstrating his attitude towards free speech and as far we all can tell, nothing has changed.

No one actually thinks this account is valuable on it's own. This "Gotcha" is a hugely important point that Musk doesn't understand.

Being able to claim someone's speech makes you "unsafe" is akin to "words are violence" that the pro free speech crowd objects to. Elon may face a greater risk of harm with the world having a way to guess his location (broadly) but that's not a case to silence speech.

It should also be noted he's a billionaire. Have you seen Zuckerberg's security spending?

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589414958508691456

Whether the law adequately protects people's privacy is a different conversation (worth having in my opinion!), and so is whether or not public or private non-government entities should step up instead and provide that additional protection.

With steps like this, he just clearly shows that he either never was all that serious about that claim, or that he has quickly learned why content moderation isn't as easy as "upholding the law and nothing but the law", especially in the U.S.

Court cases or unredacted mass data dumps are far different than data dumps targeting very specific individuals -- usually with the intent of enabling direct harm.

Like Musk has done with previous Twitter employees? There was reports Roth was threatened at had lot leave his house for safety reasons.

and if he were to acknowledge that he has changed his mind it would be okay-ish, but his whole process is to cause maximum amount of cringe, outcry, gossip/scandals, and so on, because this is what resonates with his personality anyway. so far it led him to the top of that particular game .. so it's unlikely he'll change.

It's unclear if Ella Irwin still works at Twitter, but giving everything going on I strongly suspect there's no one to moderate against Elon personally banning an account he does not like.

It's funny seeing the civility break down in certain topics.

Emotion, speculation, and bias run wild.

Almost like a campaign...

Nevermind the actual pedos, noone demanding the client list to the island travelers.

You guys never give up on your conspiracy theories. Its uninspired, tiresome and unintelligent for the most part.

Thankfully, this is not speculation, it's fact: https://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/a5380/millionaire-start...

Or can you not think for yourself?

But the most important point in the context here is:

> Still, there were warning signs. As we danced at our wedding reception, Elon told me, "I am the alpha in this relationship."

So, y'know - it's not speculation that he said that, we have proof. As you could have found from a quick search of a distinctive word.

Nevermind we were depending on the Russians for space flights before Elon.

Please speculate about more people so I know what to think!

Jacquesm? Marxist? I can do that too.

Do you really believe that Russia grown to be the biggest country on Earth by playing nice with natives? Or if it suddenly became evil after revolution? Russia destroyed other cultures every time it got an upper hand and was built on blood of mostly other people.

No, I think they got to be the biggest country on Earth by having land that would support decent population and econonic activity next to Siberia; Canada got to be #2 by pretty much the same method, with a different stretch of marginally useful Arctic and near-Arctic land.

Elon is looking like he got suckered into buying Twitter and now has to play the difficult and mundane role of private equity turnaround so that he can recoup his -- and his investors' -- funds. It's a huge distraction from his more important businesses.

Folks are already asking him to step down as Tesla CEO [2]. Best to kick a dog while he's down.

I think Tesla has been overvalued for some time. It's not the only EV company in the world, and soon every company (and domestic production capacity worth its salt) will be pumping out EV options for consumers. This Twitter deal was the activation energy required to jostle the Tesla stock out of its lofty position.

I hope I'm wrong, and that things at Twitter begin to stabilize. I think that SpaceX is one of the most important companies in the world right now, and it needs a leader who can continue to push the boundaries of what was thought possible.

[1] I'm thinking of putting my money where my mouth is and buying puts, which is something I rarely do.

[2] https://www.autoevolution.com/news/unconfirmed-reports-claim...

Well, c'mon, this has always been the case since the very beginning under both Dorsey and Agrawal. The difference then was that the other half of the world was condemning it.

Flying by the seat of your pants is probably fun for Elon but it makes the product worse. If the product gets worse, the people leave.

Even further? It is at $159 today from well over $300 just a few months ago.

The best time for puts was a while ago, it will be a lot harder to make the same kind of money going forward, better be careful.

Why do people feel the need to respond to valid criticism with "well technically they're ALLOWED to do [thing]?" That's neither here nor there.

We don't expect that. He absolutely does have the right to do that.

Pointing out his banning of the account simply demonstrates his free-speech absolutist hypocrisy.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589414958508691456

it demonstrates that he very well understands that posting things can lead to safety concerns.

he is gleeful when some people or groups have safety concerns from posts.

often he actively mocks them and portrays them as unreasonable if they express safety concerns and ask for some kind of help.

If Elon is concerned maybe he could just rent a jet as needed instead of keeping one all to himself.

If they were publishing "Elon has flown X miles, used Y fuel and created Z emissions in the past T time" that would be far different than what they do.

You are reaching for excuses that can't possibly apply. Perhaps you should ask why you'd go so far to excuse this doxxing, but not others.

I personally dislike Musk and view him as a conman. I take issue with several things he's done at Twitter and even more with what he's done at companies like Boring Company, Paypal, or Tesla (eg, promising the first car to the actual founder then launching it into space just to spite them).

People here just managed to find a thing where he happens to be right (whether it comes from personal pettiness or actual principle).

Second, if it were passed, intent can be very hard to prove -- even in seemingly clear-cut cases.

Third, only the DOJ could choose to actually prosecute.

> Second, if it were passed, intent can be very hard to prove -- even in seemingly clear-cut cases.

It's not at all clear cut in my opinion. This is information that is already in a public database, and it's the location of an airplane - not a person. That's not a technicality, unless the airplane is somehow a primary residence.

It's pretty different than publishing someone's private phone number or the name of the school that their children attend. The latter type of information is actually private.

ElonJet just put the information on Twitter. And Instagram, Facebook, Telegram, and now Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@elonjet

That is not true in all jurisdictions and definitely not in Germany. Since twitter offers it’s services to the general public, bans must be non-discriminatory and are open to challenge in court. Twitter can ban anyone who violates their ToS, but not just anyone Elon dislikes.

https://www.e-recht24.de/artikel/marketing-seo/11415-was-koe...

I do not believe such a thing exists in Germany. The claim certainly needs a proper source.

https://www.lhr-law.de/magazin/social-media-recht/olg-dresde...

It’s not surprising this exists. It’s equivalent to the Hausrecht in the physical world - if you make your place available to the public (a bar, restaurant, supermarket) you no longer can kick out just anyone without cause. You can ban people from entering (or make them leave) for reasons, but those must be non-discriminatory and not arbitrary. “I don’t like you nose/hair/color of your skin” won’t work. “You need to wear shoes or leave.” is likely valid.

Sure. But since ElonJet is run from the US, in a dispute between a US company and a US user, only US law is really relevant, any foreign court is likely to dismiss the claim as outside of their jurisdiction. As far as US-based users go, he basically does have the right to ban anyone, so long as he doesn't start banning people on the basis of a protected characteristic such as race or sex.

Even if we suppose, counterfactually, that ElonJet was run from Germany – while the German legal system might in that situation be open to hearing the case, I doubt ElonJet would win, when you consider the extensive emphasis which German (and EU law) puts on privacy rights, and the fact that it is willing to go a lot further in limiting free speech in the name of privacy than the US legal system is.

However, this makes him look bad, given he repeatedly claimed that the Twitter takeover was to make Twitter more pro free speech. Examples:

Two months ago he tweeted (https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586059953311137792):

“Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints.

No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes“

Five weeks ago he tweeted (https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589414958508691456):

“My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk“

And yes, people can change their opinion, but this seems more like Twitter will be in favor of free speech, as long as Elon likes it.

The previous bans were controversial because they marginalized a voice. It was never about the specific people in question. It was basically invalidating the voice of many people since these were highly influential people or politicians.

There's a huge difference. I'm not taking a position on those particular people in any way, just saying that most people don't care about ElonJet in the slightest and why catching him on technicality here doesn't matter (in my humble opinion).

But even so, I find the hypocrisy pretty interesting here. This person bought a company for $44b to improve transparency, specifically said he wasn't going to ban this account to show his commitment to transparency, and then his new company banned the account about a month later. Not only that, but the company didn't ban the related accounts showing the location of others who didn't happen to buy the company out of their commitment to transparency.

Come on, that's interesting no matter what your view on the individual.

Through his actions, Musk has shown himself to be in the latter camp. Those in the former camp should be just as mad about post-Musk Twitter as they were about pre-Musk Twitter. Problem is I don't see many people (here on HN at least) saying "Wow, I thought Musk would fix Twitter but this is not what I expected when he said he supported free speech!" To me, that shows maybe a lot of people were in the latter camp all along, and are pleased things are working out just as they expected.

It's also not that he only banned the elonjet account. He banned the accounts of people posting the video that showed him being booed in SF, he banned several left leaning journalist accounts after a campaign from alt right groups [1]. It really just shows the hipocrasy, and many people are taking note.

[1] https://theintercept.com/2022/11/29/elon-musk-twitter-andy-n...

Maybe I misunderstand you, but whose voice are you calling marginalized? Is it not the voice of politicians like e.g. Trump? Is Trump not a white rich and powerful person (I was not specifically talking about Musk).

I think the problem was actually that Twitter under previous leadership was way too lenient with powerful people. Take Trump for example, he was arguably breaking Twitter TOS on a regular basis, but never faced consequences (I'd argue because he was driving engagement so it was not in Twitters interest to ban him). When they finally banned him, it thus seemed arbitrary.

Similarly, how come Musk never got a suspension for his pedo comments, also pretty clearly a TOS violation.

I think therein lies the main problem with most social media platforms, they clearly have different standards for people who are influential enough and the rest of the population and this is by no way a left/right thing.

People don't always agree 100% with their politicians. But by banning them you take away their voice entirely.

I said very clearly I was not talking about the actual people behind the accounts themselves. I am not feeling sorry for Trump or for Elon here in any way.

How does that even work?

And if 50% share similar political opinion, how is that even possible that this opinion would be somehow inaccessible?

The opinion of people like Trump or Elon is very easy to access, and supported by plenty of people. The majority of them is never banned, because the bans are not targeting an opinion, but rather conspiracy theories and abuses. You can have exactly the same philosophy as Trump, talk and promote this philosophy, and yet never say something that will make you banned.

"Trump voters" is not a marginalised set, it contains super pacs and Peter Thiel. It may contain subsets that are marginalised but those sets are marginalised by being marginalised, not by being trump voters.

People who have little opportunity for advancement being white and Christian does not mean that whites or Christianity is under threat.

Also, trump got away with his shit for years before being banned. That looks like privilege, not oppression.

I take it you see the irony of being woke about the anti-woke

As a resident HN Christian, I don't concur.

We've seen a number of Christian individuals & businesses recently taken to court/UCMJ action for refusing to do things that are contrary to their religious (Christian) beliefs, or for openly stating their beliefs [1] , [2] , [3] , [4]

The same protections afforded to observant jews and practicing muslims should also be afforded to Christians.

It is in the Constitution after all.

[1] https://thepoliticalinsider.com/colorado-baker-sued-again-th...

[2] https://reason.com/volokh/2021/10/16/justice-thomass-opinion...

[3] https://www.christianpost.com/news/obamacare-and-the-catholi...

[4] https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/air-force-cracking-down-on-c...

It is ok to operate a business with respect for religious preferences.

It would have been more relevant to show examples where the "attacker" did not had any stakes or if it would have been proven that the "attacker" has reacted this way because the person is christian, but would not have reacted if the person was muslim, or atheist, or ... but defended the same actions. For each of your examples, I really doubt there would not have been exactly the same conflict if the person was atheists but had the same strong views.

At the end, it may even feel like Christians are slowly discovering that they are people like others and that there is no reason the society should always settle to their advantage. In a way, it feels like the "threat" in question is "stopping being privileged".

I never said anything about marginalized.

But in fact, it does not really change my argument: the examples that you are providing does not show anything bad against Christians. What you provide is just examples of neighbors quarrel where one party happens to be Christian. If you think it means Christians are under threat or unfairly treated, it makes me feel that you are thinking that the normal situation is when society always side with Christians all the time, which would be a pretty strong privilege for Christians, and very unfair for non-Christians.

The reason several people were removed is because they have made really poor choices. For example, Trump could have defended his thesis while still calling for people to not take violent action. It is incorrect to pretend that the bans are stopping politicians of doing politics: you can defend your party or explain your political ideology without breaking twitter's rules. It is incorrect to pretend that the bans are targeting a political side: if you are promoting a political ideology that is not based on hatred and lies, then you never _need_ to post anything inciting to violence or spread misinformation.

If now you are saying that Republicans are more often banned, maybe one reason is that Republicans are more prone to accept hatred or lies as part of their political ideology strategy. But being banned is a strategy consequence, it's the price you pay if you go down this road that is, again, totally a choice (as long as your political ideology is not based on hatred and lies).

I don't think that aligns with the doc drops from Twitter

I'm not american, so, some of the arguments also seem crazy. For example, the fact that the majority of the employees vote democrats does not imply that the majority of the employees are immoral persons who will cheat without scruple. It is very worrying that in US, apparently, people are so polarized and uneducated to democratic concept that if they see someone that happens to be "on the wrong side", they will think they can only be the worst of the monster without even questioning that for one second.

For every bans I've seen, the person banned was ALWAYS doing a mistake, was giving a good excuse to justify the ban when it could have been easily avoided. For example, Trump could have phrased his messages such that he calls for more calm without changing his political message. He did not, he choose to send what he has sent (he had his reasons, but it is not about "freedom of political opinions", because, unless his political ideology is based on hatred and lies, his political opinions are not restricted by avoiding hatred and lies).

This is my main issue with this: if republicans are unfairly targeted, why are they so stupid to always give huge elements that can be used, later, to justify the ban. Just use your brain and don't tweet something that is, objectively, at least borderline. If republicans are victims of the democrats, why are they not even trying to not give them ways of going away with it?

But that's not the first paradox in the US. Another one: Trump claims the election was stolen. He was the president when the election was organized (and was already predicting frauds months before the election days). He claims the steal occurred in states where he almost won, which are states where he has a lot of supporters and allies. And yet, he failed to catch any little proofs. If the election was stolen, then he is super incompetent, and should never be reelected: he has proven he is easily out-smarted by democrats.

For example, Valve is a private company that can ban anyone they like from Steam, but we wouldn’t hear this defense if a publisher get banned capriciously and lost their income.

The right to free speech entails the right to censorship. I can freely throw someone out of my house for expressing something I dislike. A publisher can refuse to publish someone's work for any reason. If someone expresses an idea others find distasteful, it is their right to boycott that person and anyone associated with them.

My problem is not with the censorship. It is with the money. Our oligarchs are comparable in power to royalty of old, and they act with no oversight and no accountability. Musk was able to waltz in and start dictating terms to millions of people. One man should not have that kind of power.

I will not claim to know where the lines should be drawn. It is clearly OK for someone to run a newsletter about local Yorkshire Terrier breeders with an iron fist, but it is clearly not OK to run a global monopoly of a social media company in the same way. I don't know what happens in the middle ground.

Now twitter doesn’t really have policies, just Elon’s whims. And those can change at any time and without any external consensus. No one knows what the rules are.

> 7:30 PM · Nov 6, 2022

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589414958508691456

https://theintercept.com/2022/11/29/elon-musk-twitter-andy-n...

I agree with your other points, but this is missing the mark. There is some degree of editorial control over what “this site” publishes, but none on the comments (you’d had to go quite far to get banned). “This site” is not a homogenous single-minded entity. And you don’t have to dig far to see both stories and comments very critical of Musk. I happen to share that point of view, but that’s besides the point.

So it's pretty rich to stretch that far to whine about imaginary censorship and then just blatantly censor speech you don't like.

I'm neither a lawyer nor an American but AFAIK according to past SCOTUS rulings, it is illegal for the government to "outsource censorship" to private parties in order to silence speech protected by 1A. A relative of DNC's Podesta or an FBI lawyer working for Twitter add to the impression more than the legal argument I guess.

I think from the legal POV, an @ElonJet suspension backstory wouldn't be as interesting as the other installment of "The Twitter Files."

The idea that the fruits of a hack should not be published by media outlets (including Twitter) for at least a cooling off period makes alot of sense. Also for Podesta to be involved in that since the hacking of his emails was one of the main events of the 2016 election cycle and he was keenly aware of the speed at which those hacks can entangle people and have a profound impact on the democratic process. There's no way a responsible company would want that traffic on their site.

Actually I feel very differently about these two things specifically because Snowden didn't just blindly dump everything he could get regardless of the consequences.

Snowden leaked information about NSA surveillance of foreign persons not on US soil - that kind of activity is explicitly within the NSA's core mission and the legal framework around it. I'll leave aside any debate of the domestic programs - he very definitely did expose entirely legal secret activities. That's either careless or malicious.

That would mean he wasn't careful at all, having outsourced the selection of what data to make public to a 3rd party.

> Sometimes things go beyond domestic vs international - because it’s someone else’s domestic surveillance and if that someone is an ally it’s at least a tiny bit problematic and worthy of review.

Everybody does this with everyone, allies and enemies alike, and doing so is a matter of state foreign policy. This type of activity is exactly what the NSA is charted for. We've reviewed this stuff in writing the laws that charter the agency and govern it's activity.

It's either careless or malicious.

Also legal does not mean moral.

Your free to disagree, but my opinion is that Snowden did the American people a public service, and put clear effort into minimizing the damage. It's not some unambiguous knight in shining armor situation, but more of a shades of grey situation where in my opinion the good outweighed the harm.

So he revealed a terrible fact in an irresponsible way, and then sought asylum in a country which shits on human rights left and right. And this isn't whataboutism, it is an expectation for consistency in morals

That was very much not the conventional wisdom at the time. This choice by Wikileaks was hugely controversial and in stark contrast with Snowden’s leaks, which were published by journalists after having been analysed, filtered and redacted. Citing Snowden and Wikileaks as if they operated in the same way is simply wrong.

And yes, just dumping stuff without at least checking them is morally and practically wrong. If only because it makes you very likely to take part voluntarily or not in disinformation campaigns if you’re fed false documents.

No, there really is very little comparison there.

Taibbi mentions two "suppression" interactions:

> Taibbi reported Twitter had "received and honored" deletion requests from both the Biden campaign and the Trump White House; he presented examples of the former but not of the latter.

(per Wiki)

Only one of those groups was actively in government and as expressed both were requests.

I haven't followed parts 2 & 3 of the Twitter files. But the irony here is that the government officials involved in part 1 were the Trump administration. Biden was not yet elected and should be considered a private citizen.

"The Trump Administration" can be opposed to actual-Trump.

This is the entire story, but lede buried by MuskHate.

Does no one out here realize this is the same hate-everything-acknowledge-nothing behavior regarding Trump?

That you must hate the person and nothing else matters... "always shoot the messenger"... It seems clear as day to me, but I guess I'm the crazy one.

EDIT: It's called cathartic scapegoating. And if you point it out, it must mean you're a Trump loving far-right loonie toon. Look at the extent that people will go to prove they aren't just shooting the messenger right here, it's just evidence it is happening.

It’s funny you mention that because a lot of the alt-right’s success the past few years has been fueled by a pure, unadulterated hatred of anything deemed liberal or progressive.

To normals, “DNC Podesta FBI” are keywords signifying far-right conspiracy talk.

Unless everyone can use the same terminology to mean the same thing, these conversations are pointless.

("visibility filtering")

https://help.twitter.com/en/safety-and-security/tweet-visibi...

The conspiracy theory that Twitter shadow banned accounts to a level in which even people looking for their Tweets couldn't find them, remains false. Everything that everyone Tweets is visible to everyone who looks at their Timeline. This is explicitly how Musk promised to run the service, "Freedom of speech, not reach" and is basically how Twitter has operated for years with the exception that old Twitter banned people who repeatedly violated the TOS.

Matt Binder: https://twitter.com/redsteeze/status/1601142989061246976/pho...

Tweeter Execs denying: https://www.newsweek.com/twitter-shadow-banning-republicans-...

There is a substantial difference between tweets not being promoted by the algorithm and tweets being invisible. A "shadow-banned" user's tweets would be invisible to even their followers.

> To be clear, our behavioral ranking doesn't make judgments based on political views

The "conspiracy theory" is that Twitter was deliberately targeting conservatives for their politics, not that the site had moderation functions.

"It appears @ElonJet is longer banned or hidden in anyway."

https://twitter.com/JxckSweeney/status/1602354433807061070

  So first @ElonJet appeared to be shadow-banned or visibility-filtered. 
  Then @JxckSweeney commented on that.
  Then it appeared that @ElonJet was back to normal.
  Then @JxckSweeney commented on that. *THIS* is what you linked to, from Dec 12, two days ago. 
  Then today, two days later, @ElonJet was suspended.
  Then you posted your comment, apparently missing the passage of time from Dec 12 to Dec 14.
  Then also today, @JxckSweeney was suspended.