Twitter has re-suspended ElonJet account
twitter.com
twitter.com
"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."
Make that what you will.
[0]: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603190155107794944
https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7zygg/twitter-bans-elon-mus...
"Sweeney has been using sites such as ADS-B Exchange to track the movements of private jets blogging to celebrities, tech billionaires, and Russian oligarchs for years now. By law, the movement of these plans is publicly available information. “This account has every right to post jet whereabouts, ADS-B data is public, every aircraft in the world is required to have a transponder, Even AF1 (@AirForceTrack) Twitter policy states data found on other sites is allowed to be shared here as well,” the account’s pinned tweet read before it was banned."
The sad part is I’m sure Elon can bury this guy in fees even if the lawsuit is ultimately ruled as entirely without merit.
Some additional info: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/12/14/elonjet...
> On Wednesday evening, the account was briefly restored, with Twitter outlining new rules seemingly designed to prevent Sweeney from posting the real-time locations of planes used by Musk and other public figures as long as he included a slight delay. Sweeney, over Twitter, asked Musk how long he’d have to delay the data to comply.
> But Wednesday evening, Musk threatened to escalate the conflict against Sweeney, saying a car carrying Musk’s son, X Æ A-12, had been “followed by [a] crazy stalker” in Los Angeles, implying without providing evidence that location data had been a factor in the purported episode. “Legal action is being taken against Sweeney & organizations who supported harm to my family,” Musk tweeted.
> Sweeney, 20, shared publicly available information about Musk’s flights, not his family members or his cars. The records stopped and ended at airports, and Musk has provided no further detail as to what legal basis Musk would cite in a lawsuit.
1. This has nothing to do with the location of his private jet.
2. You can't do whatever you want, even to protect your family. Elon has a lot of power, he can't be allowed to abuse it because some guy decided to stalk him.
Good that cars dont do it unlike private jets!
That would be terrible for privacy... /s
Also Musk isn't really trustworthy so unless this is confirmed by am independent third party there is no reason to believe the guy that moves tens of thousands of dollars to harass rescue personnel.
Even if Musk is not lying there still isn't a connection.
Edit: apparently the last data published from the elonjet account is from December 12th. Making this even more ridiculous. Not sure what I expected.
Allegedly he had the chance to buy it for £50,000. It might have been more value for money than Twitter.
Also, his plane's data is still out there, for free.
Musk considers harm to anyone's family other than his to be necessary for Twitter revenue.
> organizations who supported harm to my family
A significant problem in Twitter and social media in general. Musk seeks to protect himself, while opening the floodgates on others for his version of "free speech" by unbanning accounts previously flagged as abusive.
A hypocrite by definition.
Maybe he should stop phoning home
color me skeptical this is the actual story. he’s been very annoyed by that account for years
And I think Lil Nas X can handle his own.
Looks like they took down other accounts in violation of the new policy:
Does that make it ok to post someone’s home address?
I am beginning to think that the people who parrot it are not even interested in its response (already said and reiterated hundreds of times in the last 12 hours)
What I do care about, though, is hypocrisy.
That’s also why he is even firing the kitchen staff and selling their kitchen appliances. He is so desperate for money to keep this company from bankrup.
Which is also probably the reason why he plays with QAnon stuff. I think he is speculating on someone to take twitter away from him. Maybe.
Disputing election results is also part of the democratic process, even if you disagree with it, and should be encouraged. There is nothing in the public interesting concerned with stalking people.
Not only does it contradict his direct statement about not banning @elonjet, it contradicts his statements about twitter policy being decided by a committee, as well as his numerous other statements about allowing free speech in general.
The policy itself I think makes some sense, although it's interpretation is ripe for abuse, just posting any random picture of someone in real time could be interpreted as a violation.
If it is because he is concerned for his offspring likely he's having a how to protect my family vs how do I not be a hypocrit moment.
If something might be harmful to my kids, I would ignore what I said earlier and protect my kids first.
I don't give a shit if I will be labeled as a hypocrite. My family and kids come first no matter what.
Wouldn't you do the same? Would you be like oh damn my kid has to die because I can't be a hypocrite?
He even changed Twitter's policy and specified that it's ok to share the information of where a person was, just not track their movements live. You can argue in favor or against the policy, but we expect people to change opinion because of experience.
of course he can, but if the change is "you know I used to say unfettered 'free speech' was the most important thing in the world and lack of it was killing western society? I've changed my mind, I don't want a twitter account publishing where my private jet is" I'd expect him to have to actually say that out loud and expect him to get a lot of shit for having such weak principles.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20221213074257/https://twitter.c...
Because there are hundreds of thousands (millions?) of other truck owners also using the same justification to keep their truck?
This isn't sticking up for hypocritical wasteful billionaires, just pointing there are not very many of them in the grand scheme of things. Truck owners reducing emissions by a few percent (let alone dropping to what a car would do) would have a much bigger effect than billionaires or celebs reducing by 100%.
I'm not presenting this as fact but the argument is clearly that Musk's net effect on the global population is positive through his career choice and life's work, and that jetting around is necessary for him to complete this life's work.
December 5th: 28 tons CO2
That's more than the typical American does in a year and he did it in a few hours. Between Dec 1st and Dec 5th his flights resulted in 100 tons of CO2.
Gates, between Dec 7th and Dec 13th (similarly 5 days) produced 262 tons. https://web.archive.org/web/20221214164008/https://twitter.c...
It’s a bit like telling people that volunteer that they’re just doing it to feel good and so that they’re selfish.
The sad reality is that it doesn’t much matter. The damage we’ve done is baked in and hundreds of millions of people in the next few generations are going to have it pretty rough. Can’t unring the bell of a century+ of society not giving a shit about the environment and just pointing fingers at someone else and calling them the problem.
If you’re loaded, you may as well just take the PJ flights and enjoy them.
This information is absolutely trivial to find and monitor.
Correct pronouns, please.
it is nice to be reminded that I guess this isn't a uniquely low quality site, and that comments like yours were endemic on k5 and slashdot and usenet, too.
I of course wasn't dismissing anyone based on a label, I was dismising them based on their low quality posting:
> it truly is bizarre how many fanboys came here to post irrelevant and incorrect information to defend Musk
you're right I shouldn't discriminate, and I do also have disdain for the non-fanboys posting irrelevant and incorrect information
edit: verbosity
This makes “I am at <concert> watching <performer>” a violation.
Bug or banned? In modern twitter, who knows?!
Meanwhile, half the bots I've blocked still show up in my news feed (when it loads and I check, both of which have diminished greatly in the past few weeks)
Unfortunately I can no longer edit the title.
https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/ex-twitter-employ...
Elon responded to a few old tweets by Yoel that some people had retweeted.
Is posting this link illegal too? It's public information.
1. This is like the classic sorta thing where someone thinks a given freedom/right/restriction is ok until they feel threatened by it and suddenly it needs to be reconsidered.. it is ok in the abstract and then when the concrete harms possible become obvious your opinion changes (like being related to a victim of a mass shooting or being friends with someone gay that is being denied the rights of a "normal" marriage)
2. They could have just messaged the account owner and said "a delay of X hours is ok but real-time reporting is no longer permitted" and I am sure the account owner would have complied and they would have avoided this whole thing. It seems so deeply dysfunctional to have not done so - which is very on-brand for Musk-era Twitter.
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/02/hey-elon-let-me-help-you...
would you like someone making a website tracking you even if it was public information?
simply pathetic
I don't see the point of blocking it on Twitter when it's readily available on any flight tracking platform.
Of course spouting a load of nonsense about former Twitter employees to the point that they have to evacuate their home is perfectly ok by that same token.
Edit: figured it out - content filter on the wifi I was using was filtering out some but not all Twitter URLs. It’s always DNS, I should know better.
BUT that's some extremely bitter irony he experienced. He was proud to describe himself as a "free speech absolutist", meaning he's ready to allow controversial, offensive discussions that are on the limit of legality. He even said he will allow this jet tracker bot, to show what a cool guy he is. But now reality happened for him and he probably expected reality only applies to other people.
Posting locations someone traveled to on a slightly delayed basis isn’t a safety problem, so is ok."
Will it lead to fusion energy by the end of this year?
Think about this: we know where Air Force One is.
So why is this public? The design and history of ADS-B is an interesting topic that was talked about more during in its development and rollout. One of the design elements that's questionable is that there's really no verification on the broadcast data. You can broadcast what you want. There are demoes of people hooking up Flight Simulator and showing the ADS-B transmissions they could make that would mimic their location, altitude and heading. They didn't do broadcast it of course. It's a felony to do so.
All of this sprung from the desire to get rid of ground radar at airports. There are lots of reasons for this, some good, some questionable.
But it remains clear that this represents a plausible security threat.
So you can ask should ADS-B data be public? Well there's really no alternative. It's designed that way. The FAA has been working on privacy options for this. I'm not sure the current status.
Anyway, people rail on Elon in particular because he's so incredibly thin-skinned (eg banning people posting clips of him getting booed when onstage with Dave Chappelle) and he's a self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist", which everyone knows is a complete lie. Elon banning ElonJet is yet more evidence of that lie. People take great pleasure in such people getting egg on their face.
It's drawing attention to obscure public information, and most things that involve politeness do run on security by obscurity.
This is amazing.
Sigh.
Might as well ban people posting photos of celebrities at random places, it's way more accurate.
He just needs 3, or 4 or 5, more jets. Each flies off in a different direction.
EDIT: Updated to include Elon's preferred pronouns.
https://twitter.com/RUOligarchJets
https://twitter.com/USAirForceVIP
https://twitter.com/AirForceTrack
Do you know any other banned accounts?
Let's make a list to make sure they all restored.
UPD: More accounts...
What's going on?
Is he going to sue the FAA? His live might not be easy, but if he really wants Twitter to be a bastion of free speech, reposting very easy to find public information is probably not where the line is crossed.
Also, I'm pretty sure that the people who think of the most mundane things being said by ChatGPT are harmful are not the same ones siding with elonjet/sweeny here.
Not promoting speech that may be harmful to tens of thousands of already marginalized people = Woke Mind Virus
He unbanned Taleb Kweli, who was banned for using twitter to stalk, harass, and organise mobs against a woman he didn't like.
His campaign against Yoel Roth has resulted in Roth and his family having to flee their house.
He's very, very happy with threats, including death threats if they are people that he doesn't like.
The minute someone gets shot on a congressional baseball outing, shit hits the fan. A few school children get shot every few months...thoughts and prayers.
Of course actually trying to put it in practice immediately falls apart, but that's not the point.
Nobody on the malicious side of the "malicious or stupid?" scale actually wants everyone to have unfettered freedom of speech (see: republican outrage at LGBTQ rights, people teaching/learning about systemic racism ('CRT'), drag queen story time, republican school districts banning books for some recent examples). They just want to be able to cry "muh free speech" to silence criticism of anything they say.
As I understand it...?
A) A guy who has a bot that shares public information on Twitter has been banned, sounds like that is free speech being suppressed, not that Twitter is under any obligation to support free speech, as we have been reminded many many times by people who wanted to suppress other speech
B) There is a different guy (?) who allegedly obstructed a vehicle containing Elon Musk's child and climbed on its hood, is this a speech issue? Or assault? Asking that question mostly in earnest
C) InternetGuysRabbleRabbleRabbleAngerPolitical
At the end of the that’s the only thing that matters.
Deciding on one vs another often comes to what is perceived the most pressing matter at the moment. The long term consequences are often not taken enough into consideration.
It would appear, based on empirical evidence, that in practice everyone agrees with this point. That may count as mission success for those many people.
Was free speech absolutism ever something Musk put on the table? The issue that Musk is addressing is Twitter's systemic suppression of right-wing political speech.
There is no gain from censorship besides a limited set of cases, most of which are illegal but obviously some cases beyond that. Still very very far from the level of censorship being pushed by the Reddit/Twitter crowd these days (‘misinformation’ being bannable is a cancer on society).
And as a non-US citizen, I don't care one iota about where the US billionaires are flying, for better or for worse those US billionaires don't influence my life too much. But I do care about censorship when it comes to US politics because those US politicians decide about the status of big boom-boom military stuff in my country, stuff that is employed in killing people (this recent video [1] was filmed about 20 km from the town where I grew up as a kid). The latest Twitter seems to really have changed its stance when it comes to fighting censorship in US politics. As such, I applaud Musk on this.
[1] https://twitter.com/elenaevdokimov7/status/16015871425760706...
I am sure Parler/Gab will hire them in the future.
And it's obvious to everybody that the actual complaint was never about the lack of free speech, but who got to control the speech. And by proxy, the issue with things like cancel culture is not that it exists, but that people that used to get canceled are now canceling the other side.
There are instagrammers that were robbed due to promoting theur live locations which they no longer do. Why the weird double standard from an honest attempt to let people speak freely, yet also preserve people's safety (even if it is a self interest)?
It will be interesting to see if republishing public available data does count as aiding in the doxing. I don't think so. His doesn't profit or calls for doxing on the account.
> This confuses the issue though. ICAO numbers change if your aircraft is enrolled in the PIA program, which Elon is. Sweeny was bypassing this by using people on the ground to circumvent this by watching the jet's movement and if an aircraft was going to takeoff that had an unknown ICAO number he'd have someone at the airport to figure out it was Elon's jet that had changed it's ICAO number.
I'm assuming it's a logistical issue more than a financial one, or else more people would do it. (or private jetters can't abide to not have their own aircraft, always available and set up the way they like it)
The elonjet thing has been an annoyance to Elon for a long time, now that he owns the company he can force the guy onto another platform - and fuel the attention engine in the process.
I think it’s as simple as that - not the grand commentary on free speech that people are trying to transform it into.
Is it renewable?
As well never indicate where he's flying just use various aliases. He's made himself a huge target by jumping into the poo show that is politics.
This is of course entirely separate from whether such info was used against Musk or his family, or whether such a possibility is sufficient grounds for attempting to silence those who make it easily accessible (it's still accessible thanks to ADS-B for anyone with basic technical skills and cares enough).
However, Elon can change the rules arbitrarily and give his family special protections against harm.
Why?
Because he can. Because he owns the site. Because he paid big monies for it.
And FWIW, if you care about it, build/own an alternative.
"Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!"[1]
[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1585341984679469056?lang...
I really hope HN can steer away from the classic narration of a great place getting too popular to sustain the quality.
To the extent that something is in the commons, well it's public. At least newsworthy and much more.
The Federal Reserve is privately owned but we don't treat it like some rando llc.
If anyone doesn't like the bans on impersonators, unlabelled bots, real time live location trackers and the now removed illegal CP and child exploitation images being posted on Twitter which stayed their for years on Twitter before the takeover, they can indeed build their own federated Twitter to post all of that garbage.
Twitter has always been a cesspool and the people screaming here about it should have left Twitter years ago; before Musk, instead of tolerating the garbage that proliferated on the site.
"Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation. This includes posting links to sites with real-time location info.
Posting locations someone traveled to on a slightly delayed basis isn’t a safety problem, so is ok."
The problem is, that Elon very publicly and explicitly promised that @ElonJet would be allowed to continue as it is. His words mean less and less…
> We define “live” as real-time and/or same-day information where there is potential that the individual could still be at the named location.
https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/personal-info...
This account didn't track a flight of a plane but Elon Musks movement. That purpose of registration numbers (and ADS-B) is helping air traffic control and general safety. Not surveillance of personal movement. The same accounts for license plates of cars.
If Twitter want to do something useful they should reconsider their own standards regarding privacy in general.
As the once-upon-a-time moderator of a very large website this list reads all too familiar. Thanks for posting it!
For now, “free speech absolutistism” seems to boil down to: don’t ban me for being a nazi/spreading misinformation, please ban drag queens.
Incidentally, Kiwi Farms did not get banned from the Internet.
Edit: he's still completely asking this up as he goes along
The main one with over 1k comments and points survived only 6 hours.
In principle we would turn off the user flags and software penalties, but the thread quality is so wretched that I see no upside. I'm shocked, and I don't shock easily after 10 years of this.
which was to shadownban-2.0 the account when needed to delay news of certain travel. he came up with the idea when we pointed out other smaller accounts started to post the info and we were considering flagging them as bot last week.
It's public information. Are you literally trying to ban the ADS system?
That does not sound unreasonable to me at all. In other words, the idea that some posts might warrant a delay for a range of issues or to allow for investigation. That, to me, again, sounds very sensible.
In the case of the travel plans of certain high-profile people, you know, with so many crazy folks out there, yes, sure, give the news enough of a delay so the person can safely get to their destination. The world doesn't need to know when Elon, Messi, Buttigieg, Oprah or David Letterman in real time unless they choose to disclose details.
Certainly what he’s doing with Twitter looks weird at best to another veteran of the social media business, but I can’t even claim to have put rockets into orbit, so what do I know.
He was known for publicity stunts and deliberately contrarian statements for at least a decade now.
But I think it’s a barometer for the degree to which 1-bit red team / blue team stuff has dominated the public head space that he went from peerless hero to menace to society right around the time he started talking some Trumpy shit.
I’m roughly left of Lenin, so I personally have about zero patience with MAGA shit. But as concerning as MAGA shit is, I find the echo chamber even more worrisome.
Doesn't mean that users (like me) are going to be happy or continue using Twitter.
Guidelines say: “ anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.”
What’s intellectually gratifying about twitter/Musk drama?
However, Sweeney started using elonjet bot account to tweet his non-bot stuff and it got banned. I assume ban is for incorrect use of account or getting around his personal ban.
I note that he said he wanted a space with less constraint. He said it quite simply and directly. He's capable of both changing his mind, and in believing this is consistent, and in not caring either way.
I left twitter some time ago. Long before Musk's offer to buy kicked in. I think this is a fight amongst people I have little in common with.
This isn't really a "who cares" post because it is interesting. And arguably important. Mostly it's importance goes to the problem that Musk is now overtly in Politics, and has declared his non-neutrality in the US domestic political sphere. If he hadn't done that, I think there would be little more to remark on here than when Jack Dorsey did mildly irrational things. But a declaration to partisan views in politics changes that somewhat: he has control of a massive media machine in a politically charged context.
It is theoretically possible the FTC and the FCC both are looking at this wondering what (if anything) they can or should do. I suspect its reached a point where neither can, arguably even if they should: they lost the moment of force and the basis of "why" has also become politically charged.
The FTC would only really be driven to act if he imperils US citizens private information or interferes in trade between entities in the public eye, Or if this influences investment decisions to the share value of SpaceX and Tesla assuming there is a public share concern.
The FCC would only be driven by communications law and since Twitter isn't a common carrier or ISP as I understand them and isn't in mobile communications or RF spectrum management spaces, I don't see their role.
He may now have burdens with justice department and warrents to examine logs and data as an ongoing cost of doing business. Not because of what he says but because of the evidentiary status of what Twitter is for other people in the context of the US LEA and justice system.
The EU wants to talk but their legal paths to talk to him about what he is doing to European cultural norms, LEA and related, regulatory, location of data, GDPR whatever else, is pretty complex. And as long as he provides other outcomes like EV for the transition off Gas, and starlink to circumvent ISP monopolies they probably don't want to yank the chain too hard either.
The part that I don't like about him taking over Twitter is this: When he initially took over I was under the impression that he wanted to promote a free-speech platform that is primarily designed for thoughtful dialogue between people. However, I'm not sure the platform will trend towards this when he has so many troll posts (given his influence on the platform).
I think that given its current trajectory the platform in a few months will consist of primarily right-leaning individuals, and far-left individuals who feel it is their duty to constantly debate the right.
"It’s likely Musk will turn to Hughes for guidance as the Federal Trade Commission threatens more legal challenges. If the FTC finds that Twitter misled users over privacy protections, that would violate a decade-old consent decree. NYT reported that the FTC has already sent Twitter letters asking how staff cuts have potentially impacted Twitter’s ability to uphold that agreement. Before he was dismissed from advising Twitter, Spiro had previously said that Musk “puts rockets into space” and was “not afraid of the FTC.”
Neither SpaceX nor Twitter immediately responded to Ars’ request to comment."
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/12/musk-brings-spac...
1. Hypocrisy. He publicly promised not to take it down and then done it in secret.
2. Twitter first shadow-banned account and only after being caught actually blocked it completely.
3. TOS been changed only after account was banned.
4. Supposedly their rules apply retroactively for prior posts.
5. Bot creator account was also banned so it was personal and not because TOS.
6. Most ADS-B tracking accounts were banned including those tracking government flights and not individuals.
PS: I dont have anything against "Elon Musk private person", but I were using Twitter for a long time so I share my thougths about his decision.
I'm genuinely curious how uniformly these beliefs are held, or if it's just a determination that Musk ain't in the club any longer and is considered fair game.
Like what world are people living in here? It’s amazing elonjet has been public this long. This isn’t just about journalists or stalkers tracking him (and his family) it’s basically a national security issue.
Grow up. The us is in a proxy war with Russia and relations with China are worse by the day.
Every ships on the seas can be tracked: https://www.marinetraffic.com/