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So, how's that whole Elon free speech Twitter thing going? Turns out, not great. An article from Mike Masnick over at TechDirt has the details. Basically, back in November, shortly after Elon finished buying Twitter, he noted his belief in free speech was so strong it extended even to leaving up the Twitter account @elonjet. For those who don't know the @elonjet Twitter account used publicly available data to Tweet whenever Elon's private plane flew somewhere. Elon tweeted:
The man behind the account, Jack Sweeney, also operated a bunch of other plane tracker accounts for other billionaires (including Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and various Russian oligarchs). As of today it seems the @elonjet Twitter account, along with all the other plane trackers and even Sweeney's personal account, have been suspended. Apparently this suspension is pursuant to a new Twitter rule about sharing personal information:
It took a whole month for Elon to craft a policy to ban the account he specifically said he wouldn't ban due to his commitment to free speech. So much for the idea that the limits of Twitter moderation would be anything like "only illegal speech." It also seems (according to the TechDirt article, and I tried this myself) that you can't even tweet links to @elonjet accounts on other platforms (like Facebook or Instagram). Amusingly Elon's original tweet from November now has a Community Note on it noting what the account that was being mentioned in the tweet was and the fact that it's banned.
Twitter files dump about the internal deliberations on how this policy change and these bans came about when?
ETA:
Seems @elonjet was unsuspended. Apparently the new policy requires "slight" (no word on how long that is) delay before posting info. Although, at the time of this edit the account appears to be suspended again. Link.
ETA2:
Elon now claiming that legal action is being taken against Sweeney. Would love to hear what legal action he's alledgedly taking.
The jet tracker seems like a security threat by making Elon's whereabouts at any time so easily known by a potential assailant. I'm sure a twitter account could be created that publishes public home ownership information that only tracks prominent journalists. They would be right to feel threatened by this account. Jet tracker and public homeownership information are publicly available but aren't exactly voluntarily given.
Trying to frame this as hypocrisy ("Oh so Mr Free Speech doesn't want crazy people to know where he is at all times?!?!") on the same level of censorship as banning Babylon Bee for misgendering Rachel Levine is eyerolling.
I mean, he's the one who publically committed to not banning that account. Nobody made him do that.
You seem to be shifting the goalposts here, your only point now is this very narrow one where he is throttling an account that can be reasonably perceived as a threat to his personal safety when he said he wouldn't do that earlier. You're not making any broader claim about how he is being a hypocrite about Free Speech? Because the context for why he criticized old twitter management was very different than doxxing/safety threats.
The more I think about it, this is actually a great demonstration. Prior twitter management censored political speech surrounding various issues (COVID, trans issues). Current twitter management censors accounts that are threats to personal safety. Which one is gets criticized by the mainstream press?
Do you apply these standards consistently? When an account like @LibsOfTikTok posts about a drag event, is that a threat to the safety of those going to the event?
Different things. If Libs post about “they are having a drag show at school X at time Y” it allows people to protest the event. That is, it serves a social use (for the reader to decide if benefit or detriment).
But showing the location of a single person? Hard to imagine the social use there.
Just because something serves a social use doesn't mean it can't also pose a threat to safety. Both can be true at the same time.
For the record, I have no issue at all with LoTT posting about “they are having a drag show at school X at time Y” even if there were dozens of credible shooting or bomb threats. They have the right to post that information, and what other people do with that information isn't LoTT's responsibility. I also have no issue with posting publicly available flight tracking data, but I also don't believe that's in any way shape or form a threat to anyone's safety (it also doesn't matter if it is).
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