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.
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.
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?