Musk throws journalist off Twitter.

[Goonie]

Elon Musk reinstates Twitter accounts of suspended journalists

On a wild day of bans, sudden U-turns and chaotic messaging, Musk abides by Twitter poll result that favoured restoring the accounts of reporters he accused of ‘doxxing’ him

www.theguardian.com

 

[Always in His Presence]

Brett Kavanaugh was almost attacked at his house, and Steve Scalise was attacked as part of a group of Republican congressmen at a public baseball field, and actually didn't seem to have been targeted. ElonJet would tell you what city he's in. At a stretch, you can also tell what airport he's in, but not really with enough time to get there to do any harm unless you are already there.

Evidently the man has a difference of opinion.

How difficult is it to just honor the man’s wishes not to be stalked in real time.

Doxing is dangerous.

That is why you and I both don’t publish our personal information.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

To summarize Musk.
Any info on twitter that may jeopardize my private safety: banned.
Any info on twitter that may jeopardize public safety: all good.

For starters, I don't think it's the job of a public speech platform to be banning either one (if the platform is what it says it is) provided it's not outside the law.


Having said that, with regards to intent:
I don't think we're talking about "any old info" here.

I think the core of the conversation is freedom of speech and expression. What political/ideological viewpoints are being "expressed" by posting someone's location while they're in an area considered to be public?


"It's public information and legal, so I can" (while technically true) is a flimsy justification if it's a conversation about freedom of expression.
Sort of like the guys who "exercise their right to open carry" in public parking lots outside of venues where their ideological opponents are meeting. Sure it's technically legal, but the real intentions behind them doing so are pretty thinly veiled.

It's a means of attempted intimidation under the guise of "I'm just doing this thing that's technically legal"


"I hate pineapple on pizza" is legal to say
"Here's the grocery store where the wife of the guy who likes pineapple shops" (without specifically calling for any illegal action) is legal to say

But anyone looking at it honestly knows the intent behind the two are very different.

 

[Always in His Presence]

Let's remember the history behind this: Jan 2022

Elon Musk offered teen $5K to delete Twitter tracking his private jet

Musk reached out to 19-year-old college student Jack Sweeney to express concern about a Twitter account he runs called @ElonJet.

nypost.com

He offers the teen 5,000 to stop - the teen countered with $50,000.00 .

Sounds like extortion to me.

Tesla founder Elon Musk offered to pay a tech-savvy teenager $5,000 to shut down an account that kept tabs on his private jet due to concerns about his personal safety.​

​

The billionaire reached out to the 19-year-old college student, Jack Sweeney, last November to express concern about a Twitter account he runs called @ElonJet, which provides regular updates on flights of well-known figures by using publicly available data, according to direct messages reviewed by the Post and first reported by Protocol.​

​

“Can you take this down? It is a security risk,” Musk wrote to him in a direct message on Twitter dated Nov. 30.​

​

The pair exchanged several more messages, with Musk pressing for details on how Sweeney set up the bots and what he earned by operating them. Eventually, Musk offered $5,000 to delete the account.​

​

 

[RocksInMyHead]

Evidently the man has a difference of opinion.

How difficult is it to just honor the man’s wishes not to be stalked in real time.

Evidently he does, and that is certainly his right. However, the primary issue here is that Musk took over Twitter vowing to "protect free speech" - even specifically calling out the @elonjet account as something that he would permit, even though he didn't like it. In the weeks since, he's proved that to be a blatant lie - banning disgruntled Twitter employees, journalists, and now plane tracking accounts. He's also apparently blocking the posting of links to the primary Twitter competitor that's been growing since he took over (Mastodon - their Twitter account is also suspended). I - and many others - feel that it's important to call him out on his hypocrisy.

 

[Always in His Presence]

Evidently he does, and that is certainly his right. However, the primary issue here is that Musk took over Twitter vowing to "protect free speech" - even specifically calling out the @elonjet account as something that he would permit, even though he didn't like it. In the weeks since, he's proved that to be a blatant lie - banning disgruntled Twitter employees, journalists, and now plane tracking accounts. He's also apparently blocking the posting of links to the primary Twitter competitor that's been growing since he took over (Mastodon - their Twitter account is also suspended). I - and many others - feel that it's important to call him out on his hypocrisy.

Have a good time with that.

 

[RocksInMyHead]

Let's remember the history behind this:

Elon Musk offered teen $5K to delete Twitter tracking his private jet

Musk reached out to 19-year-old college student Jack Sweeney to express concern about a Twitter account he runs called @ElonJet.

nypost.com

He offers the teen 5,000 to stop - the teen countered with $50,000.00 .

Sounds like extortion to me.

Tesla founder Elon Musk offered to pay a tech-savvy teenager $5,000 to shut down an account that kept tabs on his private jet due to concerns about his personal safety.​

​

The billionaire reached out to the 19-year-old college student, Jack Sweeney, last November to express concern about a Twitter account he runs called @ElonJet, which provides regular updates on flights of well-known figures by using publicly available data, according to direct messages reviewed by the Post and first reported by Protocol.​

​

“Can you take this down? It is a security risk,” Musk wrote to him in a direct message on Twitter dated Nov. 30.​

​

The pair exchanged several more messages, with Musk pressing for details on how Sweeney set up the bots and what he earned by operating them. Eventually, Musk offered $5,000 to delete the account.​

​

Sounds like negotiation to me. Sweeney was not threatening Musk in any way, nor was he doing anything illegal. Musk offered him money to stop, and Sweeney counter-offered. Musk declined to accept the counter-offer, and now here we are.

If Musk felt threatened by the account, then there were a number of legal avenues that he could have pursued (cease-and-desist, restraining order, etc). To my knowledge, he has not done this.

 

[ralliann]

Except the site didn't have such a policy. Elon created it and then banned people without warning.

Now he has

 

[Always in His Presence]

Sounds like negotiation to me. Sweeney was not threatening Musk in any way, nor was he doing anything illegal. Musk offered him money to stop, and Sweeney counter-offered. Musk declined to accept the counter-offer, and now here we are.

If Musk felt threatened by the account, then there were a number of legal avenues that he could have pursued (cease-and-desist, restraining order, etc). To my knowledge, he has not done this.

Considering neither you nor I know what happened behind the scenes in the past eleven months of this happening, at best we have conjecture.

It's obvious the student was doing it for the purpose of making money.

 

[The IbanezerScrooge]

Sounds like negotiation to me. Sweeney was not threatening Musk in any way, nor was he doing anything illegal. Musk offered him money to stop, and Sweeney counter-offered. Musk declined to accept the counter-offer, and now here we are.

If Musk felt threatened by the account, then there were a number of legal avenues that he could have pursued (cease-and-desist, restraining order, etc). To my knowledge, he has not done this.

Right. It only cost him $44 Billion to get him to stop. He should have taken the counter offer, but then he wouldn't have gotten to play god. Meh.

 

[Say it aint so]

For starters, I don't think it's the job of a public speech platform to be banning either one (if the platform is what it says it is) provided it's not outside the law.


Having said that, with regards to intent:
I don't think we're talking about "any old info" here.

I think the core of the conversation is freedom of speech and expression. What political/ideological viewpoints are being "expressed" by posting someone's location while they're in an area considered to be public?


"It's public information and legal, so I can" (while technically true) is a flimsy justification if it's a conversation about freedom of expression.
Sort of like the guys who "exercise their right to open carry" in public parking lots outside of venues where their ideological opponents are meeting. Sure it's technically legal, but the real intentions behind them doing so are pretty thinly veiled.

It's a means of attempted intimidation under the guise of "I'm just doing this thing that's technically legal"


"I hate pineapple on pizza" is legal to say
"Here's the grocery store where the wife of the guy who likes pineapple shops" (without specifically calling for any illegal action) is legal to say

But anyone looking at it honestly knows the intent behind the two are very different in their intent.

Terms of service. All media platforms have that. Subscribers can read it before they agree to them. Musk is free to have the wild wild west of social media he advocates. Of course Musk is spouting nonsense. He says it's a free speech public square replete with a soapbox, but takes the soapbox away as he makes rules on the fly. The very same thing he criticizes twitter's previous ownership of doing in the "twitter file" release. If someone is so enamored with the idea of Musk himself is expressed in "hey, I want to literally see where he goes and what he does", then that IS an ideological viewpoint being expressed. That was the actual case with the elonjet guy. It was out of admiration. Frankly to me if people are spreading Islamic terrorist ideology on a social media platform, that should be banned. To you, I guess not. Frankly to me if during a pandemic where millions are dying, if people out of sheer greed and grift are exposing dangerous information, that should be banned. To you, I guess not. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the blatant hypocrisy in Musk's managing of twitter. My safety, then ban. Public safety, who gives a rip.

 

[Say it aint so]

These are Musk's rules. Ban journalists at his discretion for breaking rules that did not exist prior on twitter.
Then reinstate said journalists after a twitter poll where people voted in favor of reinstating them.
Trump was reinstated the same way.
At least the Neo-Nazis he reinstated didn't have to go that route.

 

[Blade]

Elon Musk warned he faces EU sanctions after booting journalists off Twitter

The sudden, sweeping purge comes after controversy over Twitter suspending an account which tracked Elon Musk's private plane. The billionaire had previously indicated that he was so committed to free speech on Twitter, that even the jet bot would not be banned.

news.sky.com

So much for his commitment to free speech.

to know how Twitter was before and oddly who they banned back then or shadow banned (then NO fake news they don't do that) it was fine they were doing a great job. One would think the left would be happy for all those people that were banned are now back on Twitter.

Then share all the story for there's more to this and has nothing what so ever to do with free Speech.

 

[RocksInMyHead]

Considering neither you nor I know what happened behind the scenes in the past eleven months of this happening, at best we have conjecture.

Of course, though the lack of any legal proceedings against Sweeney and the fact that his tracker remains up (just on sites other than Twitter) suggests that either Musk did not take any legal action or he had no legal leg to stand on.

It's obvious the student was doing it for the purpose of making money.

I fail to see how that's obvious. Seems to me that he did it as a combination of coding/development practice, an interest in aircraft (apparently his dad works for an airline and he's been playing with flight trackers since middle school), and an interest in Elon Musk.

 

[Always in His Presence]

I fail to see how that's obvious. Seems to me that he did it as a combination of coding/development practice, an interest in aircraft (apparently his dad works for an airline and he's been playing with flight trackers since middle school), and an interest in Elon Musk.

From the link provided:

The pair exchanged several more messages, with Musk pressing for details on how Sweeney set up the bots and what he earned by operating them. Eventually, Musk offered $5,000 to delete the account.​

 

[RocksInMyHead]

From the link provided:

The pair exchanged several more messages, with Musk pressing for details on how Sweeney set up the bots and what he earned by operating them. Eventually, Musk offered $5,000 to delete the account.​

Yeah, Musk asked him to get a baseline of what the account might be worth. Apparently, he was making no more than $20/month off of it at that point, per this article: Elon Musk offered a college freshman $5k to delete a Twitter account

Musk asked Sweeney how much he made off the Twitter accounts, which Sweeney said was no more than $20 a month. Then Elon Musk made his own offer: $5,000 to delete the account and help the billionaire keep “crazy people” from tracking his location. Sweeney told Musk to add another 0. “Any chance to up that to $50k? It would be great support in college and would possibly allow me to get a car maybe even a Model 3.”

If his goal was to make money and he was only pulling $20/month, $5000 would be a screaming deal.

 

[Arcangl86]

Now he has

Yes now he has. But he created the rule, then banned people for tweets they made before the violation of the rule. The backlash seems to be the only reason he reinstated the accounts of the journalists, who were simply reporting on something he had done.

 

[ralliann]

Yes now he has. But he created the rule, then banned people for tweets they made before the violation of the rule. The backlash seems to be the only reason he reinstated the accounts of the journalists, who were simply reporting on something he had done.

So, they were reinstated and he created a rule. No biggie

 

[ThatRobGuy]

Terms of service. All media platforms have that. Subscribers can read it before they agree to them. Musk is free to have the wild wild west of social media he advocates. Of course Musk is spouting nonsense. He says it's a free speech public square replete with a soapbox, but takes the soapbox away as he makes rules on the fly.

I don't think he advocated for absolute anarchy, did he?

That seems to be the strawman some people propped up in efforts to try to catch him in a hypocrisy trap, but there's a stark contrast between the true "wild west", and someone merely saying "the town square shouldn't be moderated and administered by a heavily politically biased entity"

If would seem as if some people are going out of their way to push the envelope on certain things just so they can prove "Elon was wrong". Ex: when he pointed out the flaws with the "verified system" Twitter had, which were valid critiques of the system...sure, he was short-sighted in how he approached the problem with the "bull in a China shop" routine, and his approach could be rightfully described as "ready, fire, aim", but people seemed all to eager to run out and try to abuse the changes immediately just to be able to say "See! Look!, Elon was wrong!"

Just because he had a flawed solution to the problem, doesn't mean the problem never existed.

The very same thing he criticizes twitter's previous ownership of doing in the "twitter file" release. If someone is so enamored with the idea of Musk himself is expressed in "hey, I want to literally see where he goes and what he does", then that IS an ideological viewpoint being expressed. That was the actual case with the elonjet guy. It was out of admiration.

"I want to show everyone where Elon Musk is at, at all times" isn't an ideological viewpoint. At best, it's an unhealthy obsession, at worst, it's a potential security risk.

Frankly to me if people are spreading Islamic terrorist ideology on a social media platform, that should be banned. To you, I guess not.

I've said anything that's against the law should be banned...last time I checked, committing terrorism and promoting and encouraging acts of violence is against the law, yes?

But, perhaps that should've been a gripe brought up to the previous leadership team when they were allowing other world leaders to say things like this on the platform.

But they were too busy focusing on "important stuff", like making sure right-wing pundits didn't say anything they didn't like about bathrooms.

Had the previous moderation teams been focused more on consistency in the application of their rules (instead of making sure they were abiding by the intersectionality hierarchy chart), they may have had more credibility.

Frankly to me if during a pandemic where millions are dying, if people out of sheer greed and grift are exposing dangerous information, that should be banned. To you, I guess not.

Actually, if you were familiar with some of my previous posts, you'd know that I was against people trying to profit off of selling quack cures and promoting quack cures for profit.

With regards to banning folks for "promoting vaccine hesitancy", I don't think that all bans pertaining to covid were equally warranted.

For instance if someone was using libelous and slanderous language (which are against the law) to the effect of "Bill Gates is trying to microchip people" or "Soros has a plot to use vaccines to intentionally kill people to reduce the population", then sure, toss them off the platform.

If a person is saying "Hey, children are at significantly lower risk, I don't think there's any reason to rush out and get your 6 yo vaccinated for covid" or "the vaccines aren't stopping the transmission anymore, they're just reducing symptoms so I don't think it's worth the risk" or "if you just recovered from covid, you're unlikely to catch it again for while, so there's no reason to race out and get the vaccine"... while those statements could create vaccine hesitancy among some who read them, they're accurate, and expressing an opinion based on a true statement shouldn't catch a ban.

Doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the blatant hypocrisy in Musk's managing of twitter. My safety, then ban. Public safety, who gives a rip.

...but the subject matters that people were getting banned for weren't all rooted in public safety.

Critiquing something can't be banned simply on the grounds that the critique could cause some random nutjob to do something irrational against the target of that critique. If we applied that rule universally, we'd never be able to challenge anything.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

Evidently he does, and that is certainly his right. However, the primary issue here is that Musk took over Twitter vowing to "protect free speech" - even specifically calling out the @elonjet account as something that he would permit, even though he didn't like it. In the weeks since, he's proved that to be a blatant lie - banning disgruntled Twitter employees, journalists, and now plane tracking accounts. He's also apparently blocking the posting of links to the primary Twitter competitor that's been growing since he took over (Mastodon - their Twitter account is also suspended). I - and many others - feel that it's important to call him out on his hypocrisy.

But is anyone really 100% hypocrisy-free?

His vow to "protect free speech" I would assume still has limits, and yes, those limits will sometimes be influenced by personal biases.

That's why I'm not necessarily crazy about having the town square's power being consolidated like it is.


But with regards to someone calling themselves "a protector of free speech" or a "free speech absolutist", I've always seen that as somewhat hyperbolic in a way.


I was discussing over lunch with my cousin earlier and used this analogy/hypothetical to describe what the situation is like.

If the movie theater in my town was run by panel of staunch evangelicals, and they were blocking/banning tons of movies from being shown there on the grounds of what they thought was offensive, I would have a problem with that. If I were an uber-rich guy, I would be trying to make a bid to buy and take over the movie theater and remove that kind of censorship. One of my selling points (to reach out to other like-minded people) would be to describe myself as an "artistic expression advocate", "anti-censorship absolutist", and that I was going to "protect movie-making freedoms at all costs"

If I succeeded in taking it over, and the first thing my opponents did was to try to immediately put in the most vile, disgusting, things they could find, knowing that it would eventually cross my comfort-level line and make me say "yeah, this is my theater, I'm not screening that here" just so they could "prove a point about how Rob is a hypocrite", that really wouldn't be an entirely fair critique, and certainly wouldn't negate the existence of the previously existing problem I was trying to solve in the first place by taking it away from the previous leadership.