The dude is truly off his rocker now. The "rules" are whatever he makes up on the spot. He's self-destructing before our eyes...no longer the richest man in the world. Telsa stock tanking all because he can't STFU and acts like a spoiled 12 year old.
Come on now. They were linking directly to the tracker that Sweeney was banned for, not just reporting on the story about it.
It was a childish petulant doxxing on purpose and they got treated the same as Sweeney.
If it were an algorithm, everyone in Twitter would be banned by tomorrow. I hope it works.
He's making rules he promised not to, and we don't have to pay for the privilege to criticize that hypocrisy.
But it is certainly worthwhile pointing out the hypocrisy of his statements. When people’s words don’t line up with their actions you should be wary.
Now that he forbid people from posting links to that too: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FkEg9iyUUAAUFI6?format=jpg&name=...
Doxxing isn't illegal. I thought Elon claimed that ONLY violation of national laws could be the basis for deplatforming. As if his understaffed team can make legal decisions on the spot, and output true/false about millions of tweets that fall into gray areas. They don't even KNOW the whole body of law, and they aren't the judge or jury either.
I had two discussions with Noam Chomsky about how capitalism has co-opted Freedom of Speech, just like it has done with Women's Lib and many other things
In 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HovxY1qBfek
A year later: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv5mI6ClPGc
The airspace of a place is a commons, what happens in the commons is everyone’s to know.
If you are sure of yourself, do a little experiment. If you truly believe it’s legitimate, why not just buy an AirTag and hide it on a person’s car…perhaps a local well known business owner. Create a website that publishes the live location of the vehicle. Let us know here how that goes for you.
Plus he's a public personality, so not really concerned by most of that "anti-doxxing" rule
> Sweeney said he hasn't received any notification of legal action, and the last time his bot tweeted anything was Dec. 12, "which is not last night, so I don’t get how that’s connected.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/twitter-suspe...
Did you really create a new account just to spread misinformation?
This approach won't solve the problem. Especially for a celebrity. Twitter's censorship was dumb before, but this is equally or even dumber by being so prominent and kicking the bees nest.
People making bomb or mass shooting threats get arrested all the time. You shouldn't have people fear for their lives.
Elon Musk himself argued this exact specific thing is included.
Nov 6, 2022, 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"
But there’s no evidence the dangerous situation happened at all (and even the counter evidence of there being no police report). He’s previously lied about another son dying in his arms (to justify not unbanning Alex Jones) so it’s very feasible the entire incident is made up.
The last flight tracker post was several days before the alleged incident. Totally unclear what link exists between the flight tracker and the alleged incident, unless an ADS-B transponder is on the car and the car is flying.
Even if there was a link, a dedicated stalker is perfectly capable of retrieving the flight information themselves from government websites or other tracking websites. Elon hasn’t even asked for it to be restricted information - which just requires asking the FAA, most flight tracking websites voluntarily comply with the list as well, though not all. That would be a reasonable first step to make, along with privately discussing the incident with the account holder.
Transponders are in planes mostly for safety. Their automated dissemination is part of the safety mechanisms of that transport medium and putting up with them (when required) is part of the privilege of using that public good. Similar to requiring drivers licenses to drive.
The simple fact of the matter is that due to how this data is created, it's publicly accessible information: All airplanes flying in civilian airspace are required to broadcast ADS-B data for safety reasons. It gives controllers (and other aircraft in your nearby airspace) a view of what's happening. Your airplane essentially broadcasts a payload every second that sends out your GPS coordinates, heading, speed, altitude, aircraft identification information, etc.
The COOL thing (speaking as an aviation geek), is that you can buy a cheap little antenna, plug it into a Raspberry Pi and start seeing these raw packets from airplanes FLYING OVER YOUR HOUSE. FlightRadar24 and ADSB Exchange basically crowd source a bunch of real-time data from people who have these antennas and are running various types of software.
Basically, since this is happening in public view and the data is available (primarily for safety reasons), then there is really no reasonable expectation of privacy. In a way, it's like people taking a photo of you on the street and posting about it -- since you're in a public space, there is no expectation of privacy. You might not like it, morally it might feel wrong, but there is no reasonable legal reason that bans this.
Fortunately (for Elon), he is a billionaire and can lobby to change laws he doesn't like if he so wishes.
Sorry, but that is a really weird justification. It seems to me that is just the type of issue that corporate boards are designed to handle without the need for vigilanteism.
You can’t actively imply people should give you and your business partners money because you physically showed up to a location and then be upset that people care where you are physically located
You can’t actively imply people give you and your business partners money because you physically showed up to a location and then be upset that people care where you are physically located
He’s described himself as one, and I can’t see a way to square the idea that he says he is a free speech absolutist with the excuse that free speech is hard to regulate in the real world. He’s either a moron or was incapable of understanding even first level consequences of his actions or he’s an actual moron
Also I should note, that nobody asked me if I think people who intentionally cyberstalk folks online using public information are slimy either…(but I do).
Do you have evidence of that? He claims they were reporting the location.
For one thing, it's different because there is no law that cars need an active transponder while operating.
But cars do have a license plate anyone is free to look at while they drive by so in that sense it's the same.
False memories are not uncommon with traumatic events like a child's death. I'd give anyone a pass on that one and give the benefit of the doubt.
If you have an objection to this tracking, you'd have to take it up with the FAA. Because the legitimate interest is that the rules require airplanes to transmit this information any anyone is free to listen to it.
Which is a great thing for aviation safety, so I'm glad the rules exist.
1. The jet’s location is publicly available by law.
2. No one knows who’s in “Elons jet”.
If Elon wants to travel private without anyone knowing he is he can simply charter a jet. This is what most celebrities do.
https://www.amazon.com/Conflict-Not-Abuse-Overstating-Respon...
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603609466301059073
> Telsa stock tanking all because he can't STFU and acts like a spoiled 12 year old.
Uh, the whole stock market is down. Amazon is down almost as much as Tesla. 48% vs 50%.
Flights supplying Ukraine were routinely top viewed flights on that website (they were flying to Rzeszów in Poland, so there was no real risk of Russian shooting them down).
AWACS planes and tanker flying in holding patterns over Poland, Romania and Baltic Sea used to be top observed planes on flightradar24 but I should be now working not looking through flightradar24 planes over Poland ( so I will link https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-60612255 that has video of inside one of them ).
Obviously planes flying combat missions are not publishing data there. Presumably ones training in restricted airspace are not either for also obvious reasons.
> Sorry, too many options. Will redo poll.
The previous poll was bad because 3x of them were basically "No" and 1x was "Yes"
New poll is heavily leaning yes regardless
(I disagree with the logic in both cases.)
Are you secretly deliberately making a bad argument?
This is 2022 Twitter-brained audience, now doesn't mean 24hrs these days.
I have personally seen the claim debunked on numerous platforms almost immediately after it was made, however, I concede that someone else may not have been exposed to that yet.
ADSB Exchange even has a ‘military’ filter to focus on them.
I’m reading too much of my disbelief Elon is a good parent into that story. I think I am retroactively applying modern Elon (weird breeder thing, arguably abusive child naming, repeated attacks on his daughter) to an earlier stage of his life. And that’s also not likely fair or accurate to who Elon was at the time his son died.
The new poll with just two options is going the other way (unsuspend now). Having just two options is the right call here.
I wonder how long it'll be before Musk starts remotely shutting down the Teslas of people who say things about him that he doesn't like.
And also when they are not hypocrite flailing liars.
My position is that I don't like his decision to ban this information, but I understand it. If, however, he is using this as an excuse to capriciously ban his enemies, that is something I don't like a lot more.
To pretend that TSLA is an outlier is a bad argument.
A certain amount of skepticism is healthy, but allowing people to flood the water with BS allows them to get away with lying more often than not (people just throw their hands up and say “who knows!”). Ties go to the liar.
At a certain point you have to pay a repetitional penalty and Elon has spent more than his fair share from that account. If he’s going to claim something I’m not even going to entertain it until he proves proof.
In this context it is a bit of a reach but I don't think they're wrong, and I don't think there's a reason to expect normal workers and CEOs to follow the same logic.
These kinds of comparisons, where two vaguely similar situations are considered equal regardless of the wealth, power, or influence of the participants remind me of this quote by Anatole France:
> The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.
There's very good ways to guess who's in Elon's Jet.
That's not entirely true, if someone had a copy of all of the recent tweets from one of the banned accounts, then it'd be relatively easy to check if any of them violated the new policy in any reasonable sense.
> A certain amount of skepticism is healthy, but allowing people to flood the water with BS allows them to get away with lying more often than not (people just throw their hands up and say “who knows!”). Ties go to the liar.
However, I agree with you completely here. What I disagree with was the original comment I was responding to simply declaring that he had banned them despite them not violating the policy. That statement may end up being true, and maybe that person has evidence for it, but if so they should provide it. And if they don't have evidence for it, they should say something much more like what you've said here.
I think Elon should provide evidence for his claims as well, and I'd make the same criticism of him. If you're going to ban high profile journalists who are critical of you en masse with a new rule you just enacted, you'd better publish receipts along with it, at the very least.
This is certainly not true in Europe, and in the US there's generally zero restrictions on publicly sharing any kind of PII.
Obviously it’s a different story if someone would indeed make his (and his family) real-time moves outside his jet known. But I haven’t seen that unless he announced it himself.
This isn't exactly "public flight data", in many cases it's illegally collected and published flight data.
E: I can't reply to "imnotjames" below thanks to HN ratelimits, but here you go:
It's an obvious GDPR violation, just like it'd be an obvious GDPR violation to publish a similar database but with phone IMEIs and associated locations instead of aircraft.
But what's definitely not legal anywhere in the EU is to record unencrypted radio transmissions, use it to construct a database full of PII, and distribute it like Flightradar and friends do.
E: can't reply below due to ratelimits
>Hence why I said "in the US"...
Hence why I said "in Europe"...
Edit: that said, there could be some small tenuous grain of truth to what Musk thinks happened...
Just exactly what “responsibilities” do you perceive me to have in this discussion? Others are advocating monitoring another person’s property using technology and publishing it on the internet. I am suggesting that there is no reasonable civil reason to do so. The only “responsibility” I have here is to be true to my opinion. I stand by it.
Also, I used the term “cyberstalking” because that is exactly what it is. Here is a Wikipedia page on the term:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberstalking
According to that page cyberstalking is the use of the internet and technology to stalk an individual and those actions “may include monitoring”.
Here is the definition of “stalk”:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalking
“Stalking is unwanted and/or repeated surveillance by an individual or group toward another person”
If you find fault in my definition, feel free to push an edit to those Wikipedia pages.
I mean, that particular individual is in turn weird and not okay.
But who am I to say? And what does it matter if something is weird and not okay? Lots of things fit that bill, and that doesn't mean they shouldn't exist.
Here’s the definition of personal data under GDPR[2] for anyone who’s curious. If this information hypothetically were to be published by a company with a European or UK connection about an EU or UK data subject and that person were to complain to their national data protection authority we might be in GDPR enforcement territory.
[1] or UK because UK GDPR is a thing even though the UK is no longer in the EU
[2] https://www.gdpreu.org/the-regulation/key-concepts/personal-...
> a company with a European or UK connection about an EU or UK data subject
If you have EU or UK data subjects, you have an European or UK connection and have entered GDPR enforcement territory.
Fake news.
>You can see how that might be something a platform would want to suppress, not because they’re Democrat sleeper agents
They suppressed it because they were very awake Democrat agents.
>but because they don’t wanna be responsible for swaying the election because of fake news.
No they wanted to deliberately sway the election, because of their partisan alliance. You can read the story here:
Part 1: Matt Taibbi: https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598822959866683394
Part 2: Bari Weiss: https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601007575633305600
Part 3: Matt Taibbi: https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1601352083617505281
Part 4: Michael Shellenberger: https://twitter.com/shellenbergermd/status/16017204550055116...
Part 5: Bari Weiss: https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1602364197194432515
Banning people for posting a link to someone else possibly violating the rules seems like a step way too far.
All tech stocks took a dive.
tracking & pointing out grossly polluting means of travel.
market making information (musk spends more time visiting ___ faltering plant or ignoring ___. Musk makes trips to __ location, acquisition in the works)?
elon is a public figure and his movements/actions create legitimate news. same as any other celebrity or politician.
gawker did this first and that was actually stalking precise irl real time locations of celebs.
There’s so much nuance to this that it’s possible this might fall under GDPR, but it’s very far from obvious.
Couldn't, there's no legal requirement for anyone to record and publish ADS-B transmissions.
> data that cannot easily linked to an individual (number plates are not protected by themselves)
This is incorrect, number plates of cars belonging to individuals are going to be protected in almost any context you'd be storing them in.
> This jet isn’t owned by musk, it’s owned by a company
Doesn't matter, Musk isn't the only person with a plane. I own my own plane, it gets tracked by these sites.
> Journalists (including citizen journalists) also have broad protections in European law and those must be weighed against the GDPR protections
Websites like flightradar24.com are not journalists, but data brokers. That's simply ridiculous.
>There’s so much nuance to this that it’s possible this might fall under GDPR, but it very far from obvious.
No there isn't, this is crystal clear.
Now that would be a perfect case for a lawsuit. I mean, Elon probably will do it anyway, but he will get reined in by the courts. Time for him to learn he's not above the law after all.
> Fake news.
Same thing. But the Hunter Biden laptop story was not only fake news, it was completely irrelevant, because Hunter Biden wasn't running for office, and unlike Trump's children, Biden's children don't work for him. And yet the fake story was leveraged by political operatives to sway the election. After all the issues of fake news swaying the 2016 election, Twitter decided the responsible thing to do for them was not to be complicit in spreading fake news this time.
There are interesting phenomena to discuss here, but Elon's mood swings aren't one of them.
How many rich and famous have been disgraced in the last 200 years because journalists posted outside their hotel room or followed their car?
I don’t question the legal right to use this data this way, although I think good arguments could be made that if you are using the data this way, your intention is suspicious and you invite scrutiny. I am challenging the folks commenting here that the data being used this way is a positive use of the data.
But two years ago, the rules were whatever Vijaya Gadde made up on the spot. Why is this suddenly a cause for outrage? Twitter has always been like this.
The comment I responded to specifically was upset about censorship targeted at tweeting Mastodon links and not another version of censorship which came in the exact same form but targeted X links. I just gave X a name.
I find it somewhat absurd that a person would become indignant when the link is Y instead of X.
No, I 'literally cannot even.' I cannot see how a platform might want to suppress anything except, perhaps, gore videos and child pornography. And that includes links to Mastodon and the ElonJet account, but I don't feel like I should have to put this disclaimer up just so people will stop telling me that I wanted to look at Hunter Biden's penis.
Sure, I can follow the proposed line of reasoning, but it is evident that instead of swaying the election because of fake news, they may have swayed the election because of not fake news. They were aware of this possibility, and yet the soldiered on censoring that story, so I'm not convinced that their actual reasoning was that they honestly did not want to sway the election.
GM is down 41% YTD. Stocks are funny that way.
It wasn't fake news and deep down all the downvoters know it.
Suppressing it when it was known to be true was also a story.
>Twitter decided the responsible thing to do for them was not to be complicit in spreading fake news this time.
Actually they were at the forefront of spreading fake news as three actual journalists disclosed. Did you not even read the coverage? Because it sounds like you didn't. I even provided links to all of it above.
Let me know after reading it if your views have changed.
I worry the American education system is failing us.
Personal politics may have made them a little more skeptical of a story sourced from rudy guiliani than one from a sketchy source on the left - but honestly if you’re not deeply skeptical of stories sourced from rudy at this point, I’m sorry to say but you are biased away from truth.
If you want twitter / fb / etc to be dumb pipes you need them to operate outside of market forces. Either by being regulated by gov as a common carrier, privatized by someone with high minded ideals enough to resist banning anyone who criticizes him and doesn’t mind losing money on it, or by being run by some non-governmental foundation. Under capitalist motivations, you’re not going to get a dumb pipe.
So far none of those things are happening. Expect twitter to continue to be not a dumb pipe, not a zone of free speech, just biased in a different way under its new management - less about maximizing $$ and more about protecting its owners interests.
Most news about Hunter Biden seems to be coming mostly from tabloids with a questionable relationship with the truth, and a political axe to grind. Even Fox News, a station known for its flexibility in what they call truth, passed on the story due to credibility concerns.
As far as I can tell, there's no convincing evidence that any of those questionable emails are authentic, and although a few of the emails do seem to be authentic, it's not clear that the hard disk itself is, and there's plenty of evidence that that hard disk has been messed with and has lots of content planted on it by others.
So everything about this smells like a dirty political hit job that even half of the Murdoch empire doesn't want anything to do with. And even if there is something here, it still pales in comparison to the corruption that Trump and his kids are still getting away with. Everything about this smells like a dirty political witch hunt based on made up or strongly manipulated "evidence".
Elon in fact has a lot to do with the apparatus of GDPR enforcement.