The Muskbrat and Twitter go on a banning spree: including news reporters!

[thewayne]

Mister "Free Speech Absolutist" sure likes banning people.

There's some interesting history here. Twitter - not the Muskbrat - posted a policy saying that you can't dox people, nor post real-time location information about third-parties. If you want to post real-time location information about yourself, feel free and go wild. The location information is in response to a Florida university student by the name of Sweeney who ran a Twitter account called (at)ElonJet which posted real-time information whenever Elon's private jet was in the air.

Now, Sweeney wasn't spying on Elon. He was using publicly-available transponder information that was available on the web. He wrote a bot that scraped the transponder information and posted it on Twitter whenever it changed. He does the same for Bill Gates, Air Force One, and a few other prominent individuals. He also posts it to Instagram and other social media sites. He also uses similar tech to post the locations of business mogul' super yachts.

This infuriates Elon. "IT'S A THREAT TO MY PERSONAL SECURITY!" This reached a head earlier this week in LA when some loon jumped on the hood of the car transporting his child, X-13 Rocket Plane, or whatever its name is, and he blames Sweeney. Next day the Twitter ban goes through and ALL of Sweeney's tracking accounts go dead. AND Sweeney's personal accounts also go dead. And the Muskbrat says he's going to sue Sweeney. For taking publicly-available information and rebroadcasting it? That should go well.

Too much caffeine, Space Karen?

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/12/musk-bans-live-location-sharing-says-hell-sue-creator-of-plane-tracking-bot/


Last night, some news reporters saw their Twitter accounts go dead. They were from the Washington Post, CNN, and the New York Times. No warning or notice, apparently Elon thinks that posting a link to a different social media platform's ElonJet tracker to Twitter is doxxing him.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/12/musk-suspends-nyt-and-wapo-reporters-from-twitter-claims-they-doxxed-him/


If someone wants to take Elon out and is serious about it, ElonJet is probably not going to be a major tool that they would use.

Comments

[thewayne]

I think he's a lot like our previous POTUS.  He's clever, but not as brilliant as he thinks he is.  He didn't invent Tesla: he was a major investor and helped it go public, then he turfed the inventors.  He's pretty good at ideas.  He's certainly not a good manager when it comes to running a social media company.  Speaking of 45, Roger Bolton has a telling line last week that is obvious when you look at him: he has no philosophy.  Nothing guides him except money and the spotlight.

[silveradept]

You would think that nothing but money and the spotlight would mean he would submit into obscurity fairly quickly, as normally the media abhors covering someone who is chasing them so obviously, but hollowing of the media combined with the ability to give a good soundbite, with possibly a dash of knowing which prejudices to play on, and here we are.