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.
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)