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We’ve updated our policy to prohibit sharing someone else’s live location
- outside1234 4y ago"Well, unless it is a previous employee on the Trust & Safety team or they use pronouns, in which case we will give you their home address..."
- pjkundert 4y agoAs soon as he delays the real-time location feed, he’ll be welcome back. This is an improvement.
- helf 4y agoUh huh. You really believe that?
- minimaxir 4y agoThe ElonJet account has also been unbanned: https://twitter.com/ElonJet https://twitter.com/ElonJet When I said last thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33988883 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33988883) I was awaiting to see what moderation rationale Elon would use I was not expecting "making up new rules" and banning ex post facto. But unbanning the account without an apology is somehow weirder.
- someNameIG 4y ago> ElonJet account has also been unbanned: https://twitter.com/ElonJet https://twitter.com/ElonJet Banned again
- dnissley 4y agoZuccJet too: https://twitter.com/zuccjet https://twitter.com/zuccjet
- AnthonyMouse 4y agoBut now presumably for violating the new policy, and so not ex post facto.
- winternett 4y agoTwitter was started as a democratic, real time, and completely free resource. It now no longer is any of those things. While I do think it's unethical to publicly post anyone's whereabouts online for everyone to see, I think that it is equally just as bad to buy a resource like the one mentioned above and then turn it into your own money making bulletin board... He should have just developed a totally new fork of Twitter under a different name perhaps. Twitter is dead... Has been for a long time now... At least everyone still has the ability to abandon it and move on to creating more useful places.
- tasuki 4y ago> turn it into your own money making bulletin board Huh? Are we in different universes?
- winternett 4y agoElon has turned Twitter into his own personal bulletin board... His posts are obviously intended to resonate across the entire platform now, even for people that block him.
- tasuki 4y agoSure. It's not "money making" by any stretch though. It's a very expensive hobby.
- wmil 4y ago> I was not expecting "making up new rules" and banning ex post facto. That's been standard practice at Twitter for a few years now.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ftfgy 4y agoSounds reasonable. Maybe this will help quell activist stalkers.
- nullish_signal 4y ago
- moloch-hai 4y agoNot verboten, just not meaningful. It presumes a happier universe than ours.
- thinkmcfly 4y agoIt is best to suppress activists. China has done a great job in HK. Elon should look to how they have been doing it.
- lesuorac 4y agoGood thing ElonJet only shares the location of an object and not a person.
- nullish_signal 4y agoAnd Elon's jet being an Agoraphobe, never occupying the same location as any People? ;)
- Rebelgecko 4y agoThere's probably multiple pilots on a rotation so you can't necessarily know which one is on board at any given moment.
- petodo 4y agoYeah, I thought about this, but by your logic you are never sharing live location of a person, it's always just hardware, whether it's airtag or smartphone and you could always argue you are sharing location of device, but privacy policies usually don't distinguish between these two.
- beams_of_light 4y agoThis is going full Streisand.
- KennyBlanken 4y agoFull Oligarch, is more like it. Musk never concerned himself about people's privacy until it was his own privacy. I'm convinced this is all about him doing a favor for all the corrupt rulers and fellow oligarchs, silencing one of the last few platforms where people with millions/billions can't shut down a story they don't like. Twitter, for all its faults, is the one place where people with little financial resources have a shot at getting restitution or justice as long as their tweet gets some attention and signal-boosted. In the space of 30 minutes a clip of video of something unjust happening to someone who would otherwise not even get a mention in the local paper, can become a national news story and wildly exceed the local power structure's ability to suppress the story. Corporations, dictators, oligarchs, and powerful politicians really, really don't like that.
- intunderflow 4y agoLive sports coverage is going to be fun
- jwond 4y agoSeems like coverage of a public sporting event is still allowed. > Content that shares location information related to a public engagement or event, such as a concert or political event, is also permitted.
- bb88 4y agoOn one hand, Elon Musk can create rules that only apply to just him. On the other ElonJet can also just post on Mastodon.
- outside1234 4y agohttps://mastodon.social/@elonjet https://mastodon.social/@elonjet
- puffoflogic 4y agoI have a theory about Twitter's often odd actions since Musk took over, although I fear HN won't like it because it may tend to paint Musk in a reasonable light: I think that we are seeing the symptoms of a team (Twitter) who is not yet used to Musk's management style, whereby he says something like, "we should do X", and he means, "we should investigate and take reasonable actions which have the same effect as (the too-bold action) X". The team interprets the first statement too literally and actually does X, which isn't really what Musk intended. I developed this theory in the roll-out of Twitter Blue, because it matches what happened very closely: Musk publicly said "hey we're going to start charging for verification and it's no longer a mark of validated identity". The team jumped and made something overnight, but this was rolled back because it's not what Musk meant for them to do. Rather, what he meant for them to do was sit down, plan what to do, and then execute it - quickly, but not immediately. And that's what happened in the end, i.e. in the past few days. This effect is exacerbated by the remaining employees at Twitter including those who are most eager to suck up to the new boss, frankly, leading to them jumping and doing what he said (over-literally). Anyways, the same theory would explain the elonjet thing. Elon says, "hey posting people's real-time location is generally seen as a bad thing, like that elonjet guy, we should look into a policy against that." Overeager underling takes this as a commandment to ban elonjet. More reasonable people who are beginning to catch on to the management style go and actually develop the policy; once it's developed, it makes sense to just Ctrl-Z the actions of the overeager group.
- Arainach 4y agoOn what do you base this claim? What is one example in the last 3 years where you think Musk's intention was to "investigate and take reasonable actions"? Did Elon decide to investigate and take reasonable action when signing an agreement to buy Twitter? Did he do so when trying to weasel his way out of the deal? Did he investigate and take reasonable action when making bids about hyperloop and tunnels that were stupidly low to block public transit efforts but then never came to fruition?
- phyzome 4y agoThat might be a factor (and I've entertained this idea myself!) but Elon is also shown to be impulsive and tyrannical enough in his public words (and leaked communications) that I don't think this explanation is actually needed.
- fleddr 4y ago
- teachrdan 4y agoThis comment is completely in bad faith. You are literally saying that anyone criticizing this new policy -- which directly contradicts what Elon has promised in the past in regards to free speech in general and this account in particular -- is doing so only because they think Elon Musk is evil. This is clearly a self-serving action that is hypocritical on the part of the new owner of Twitter. Please engage this story on its own merits, and not based on your own assumptions of the HN audience.
- runarberg 4y agoTo be fair, a lot of us do actually believe Elon is evil. However one can still have valid criticisms of someone (or something) despite firmly believing that this someone (or something) is evil.
- fleddr 4y agoExcept that I literally did not say that as that's not what the word literally means. Further, Musk has never promised absolute free speech at Twitter, nor is this even feasible or legal. You're hearing random echos from random interviews and then parrot them into a wildly different contexts. You're all over the place. Is it a self-serving action? Possibly, maybe even likely. And if it is, can you explain the problem with wanting to protect the safety of yourself and your family? Is wanting to live out of fashion these days? To end, my point wasn't that you can't criticize the policy. The point was that the policy was not criticized. Musk was criticized. Had somebody else come up with the policy, people would be clapping.
- mlyle 4y ago> in general and this account in particular He said: "My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk" https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589414958508691456 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589414958508691456 Flipping around, without notice, a few weeks later... and banning all of the developer's accounts, including personal ones and ones that track NASA aircraft... seems slightly hypocritical and lends credence to the belief that Elon's actions are capricious, arbitrary, and impulsive.
- motohagiography 4y agoHow do guys like Bezos, Gates, Kerry, Trump family, Schwab, Soros and other billionaires get around without twitter accounts tracking their planes? He could have just switched to NetJets and put his plane into a jet share rotation until people got bored of watching the account. I get why he would use a plane, but surely someone told him the old wisdom about things that fly or float?
- tempsy 4y agothey don’t. same person has a bezos and gates jet tracker. they are just less followed.
- ihuman 4y agoThey've all been banned too
- alphabettsy 4y agoLater, seemingly as cover for the original ban.
- m348e912 4y agoI noticed some popular flight tracking websites flightradar24 and flightaware have disabled sharing location information per owner request. I did find one site that still shares flight data and flight history. https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=a835af&lat=32.124&lon=-78.055&zoom=3.1&showTrace=2022-12-14 https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=a835af&lat=32.124&lon=-...
- SXX 4y agoReason was explained in other topic. FlightRadar and few other services use information provided by US FAA thus they must follow FAA rules regarding disabling information sharing. ADS-B Exchange use information gathered by private individuals and there is no law that require to hide something.
- sorenjan 4y agoFlightradar and other sites have a vast network of receivers. Almost everyone that feeds ADS-B Exchange probably feeds to FR24 as well, and FR24 have even more receivers. They also use radar data in North America, I guess that's the FAA provided data. If they wanted to they could probably do without it since they have so many receivers enabling them pretty good MLAT, but they probably prefer to not provoke FAA. They have mentioned that they don't want governments to encrypt ADS-B or regulate it in other ways, so by self regulating they hope to be left alone. "Information about a small number of flights may be limited or blocked based on requests from owners or operators via third-party services, such as the FAA LADD. Some high profile aircraft, such as Air Force One are not displayed. Most other aircraft subject to restriction are shown as anonymized by aircraft type." https://www.flightradar24.com/how-it-works https://www.flightradar24.com/how-it-works
- m348e912 4y agoThat link you mentioned stated that certain planes (including business jets) do not have ADS-B or are not visible on FlightRadar24. Thought that was interesting.
- jimkleiber 4y agoI'm starting to realize when he talked of the "public square," he didn't mention it as a "democratic public square." The question I'm asking myself now is less about whether this policy would result in a good change, but more about the process to make such policies. Is it just me who wants more of a voice/representation in how our platforms are governed?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nickthegreek 4y agoThe only vote you get is whether you continue to have an account or not. It’s not ideal, but it is more than nothing. For those interested in exercising that vote: https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/how-to-deactivate-twitter-account https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/how-to-dea...
- jimkleiber 4y agoSlightly more than nothing. Like being in a dictatorship but being allowed to leave all your friends and family behind (and work perhaps) to go to a land that may not have any of those things. Yes I'm being dramatic yet I think we may keep bumbling through until we figure out some new form of governance for massive online platforms besides the current form of CEO decided (with maybe board of directors oversight, assuming the CEO isn't the chairperson and has captured the board).
- nickthegreek 4y agoGood analogy. There are many people who have a harder decision to make due to work/life entanglements into the network that can’t be easily replaced. There are several facebook groups that I need on occasion that keep my account active there.
- jimkleiber 4y agoThank you. Yes, it's easy for some people to move countries, as they don't have a house or a job or kids or other things that tie them down. Ironically, I think it's one of the main things the US Embassy checks when foreigners are trying to get tourist visas: how much do they have tying them down to their home country so they will be unlikely to overstay their visa? I think what happens in these situations is that people often start to organize to gain more say in the decision making process, whether that's unionizing in the workplace or political protests and/or revolutions. What I'm wondering is what will we do, those of us who have invested so much time and energy into building our digital homes and businesses in these digital nations? Just leave? Stay and organize? Organize how? I don't personally like the idea of organizing as a user union or something, as I find unions to often be an antagonistic response to company management. I hope that we would start to see ourselves more like digital citizens of these digital nations and organize to try to have more representation in the decision-making processes of these platforms that may govern much more of our social interaction than our analog governments do.
- aporetics 4y agoSo, no pictures
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ilrwbwrkhv 4y agoElon Musk is an irritating fellow.
- helf 4y agoAbsolutely fascinating how many people will contort themselves defending anything Musk does. If you disagree you are just an emotional twit on the hate bandwagon. What do they get from it?
- loa_in_ 4y agoSo you get something from hating him?
- genocidicbunny 4y agoLack of taste-of-boot in my mouth?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tasuki 4y ago> Absolutely fascinating how many people will contort themselves defending anything Musk does. I don't see any.
- recursive__ 4y ago
- Riseed 4y ago> Content that shares location information related to a public engagement or event, such as a concert or political event, is also permitted. https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1603165967453868032 https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1603165967453868032 Does that include group selfies from the invite-only afterparty because it's "related" to a public event, or no because it's invite-only? What about sharing location information related to a virtual public event? Or location information of an individual who's only virtually attending an in-person public event? And more practically, what about live-documenting crimes, police brutality, war crimes...?
- thinkmcfly 4y agoFree speech, except for the speech Elon doesn't like