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Twitter is suspending journalists who cover Elon

253 points by jacooper 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
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minimaxir 4y ago
I legitimately can't think of a way Elon can spin this. This is beyond free speech hypocrisy.
- ethanbond 4y ago
  He doesn’t need to. His legion of cult fanboys will not even bat an eye.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    Already happening, even in this thread.
- clouddrover 4y ago
  Musk is an authoritarian at heart. Hypocrisy is the expression of his authority.
- paxys 4y ago
  "I just banned fake news and wokeness from Twitter. Isn't this place better than ever?" – Elon "Yes sir, you totally owned the libs. Could you build a self driving boat?" - fanboys "On it. Will be launched next year." – Elon
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    Some of the comments in that thread actually mirror yours closely.
  - antifanboy 4y ago
    Reminds me of my favorite line of his horse shit: <random wealthy sycophant> You should sue BLM and Anti-Fa for tortuous interference and forcing the advertisers to flee. Mosque: lawyers are already on it. elon believrs in free speech as much as peter thiel does. Free for me, not for thee.
- abvdasker 4y ago
  All it took was a crowd booing him for Musk to get so bent out of shape that he abandoned all pretenses of being in favor of free speech. That must have really hurt his feelings.
djaouen 4y ago
The egomaniac is now on his “Free Speech For All… Except For You” phase of his tour.
jacquesm 4y ago
Anybody surprised? They're lucky he didn't sick his army of stans on them. This is going to be a giant run of whack-a-mole with the moles being the journalists reporting on each other being banned.
- Balgair 4y ago
  I mean, some of the journalists that he's banned tonight are pretty well hated by a lot of people already. A few thousand more trolls and dozen more death threats in their social media isn't really going to move much for them.
jacooper 4y ago
Twitter also suspended mastodon's account. Can you really say twitter, when its clearly Musk who's doing this? I really hope Mastodon will get some momentum now. (at its peak it was around 2000 per hour) https://bitcoinhackers.org/@mastodonusercount https://bitcoinhackers.org/@mastodonusercount
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jacooper 4y ago
  Apperantly he is banning journalists who are reporting on other journalists getting banned? https://twitter.com/WillOremus/status/1603557341730902018 https://twitter.com/WillOremus/status/1603557341730902018
  - onphonenow 4y ago
    I think it’s about journalists trying to keep the live location thing going which Twitter tos was updated to ban (reporting someone’s live location on Twitter is considered doxing)
    - z7 4y ago
      This might be the first post in this thread stating the alleged actual reason for the bans: they posted screenshots of the location tracking or linked to the Mastodon tracker account, breaking the rule against sharing real-time locations. That's the claim at least. Also, Musk states that these bans are not permanent and the accounts will be reinstated: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603591994244071424 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603591994244071424 He also posted a poll on the suspension time: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603609466301059073 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603609466301059073
      - dyno12345 4y ago
        supposedly some of them only reported the LAPD statement saying no police report had been filed for the alleged stalking incident
elahieh 4y ago
It is hard to follow the chains of banning because they happen so fast, but @donie was apparently suspended for posting a quote from LAPD: "LAPD's Threat Management Unit (TMU) is aware of the situation and tweet by Elon Musk and is in contact with his representatives and security team. No crime reports have been filed yet." Then @MattBinder posted "uh i just shared this straight news update just posted by @donie and moments later he's suspended" (with a screenshot of that) and got banned himself. So it's not just links to ElonJet, or links to reporting about that, it's anything Elon related. That place is burning up fast.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Bellingcat did their usual trick and came up with a location for that video, it wasn't anywhere near an airport.
  - Balgair 4y ago
    link? that sounds like a good read
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      Already posted that in another comment: https://twitter.com/eliothiggins/status/1603454821700452365 https://twitter.com/eliothiggins/status/1603454821700452365
- lucideer 4y ago
  Musk is using claims of "doxxing" to garner support for his opposition to ElonJet & his claims of stalking in LA are central to that. Boosting of the LAPD's statement that "No crime reports have been filed" weakens the plausibility of his general campaign against ElonJet, so I'd say that's the specific connection here.
dottjt 4y ago
I get the sense that a lot of these suspensions are due to the moderation teams within twitter being decimated, and instead having all this functionality automated within Twitter.
- Finnucane 4y ago
  Maybe. I mean, on my mastodon feed, I have a filter to automatically skip over any mention of 'twitter', 'elon', or 'musk'. I guess they're doing the same thing?
  - ngoilapites 4y ago
    GREAT to know about these filters, thanks!
lapcat 4y ago
From what I've seen of Twitter screenshots, some of these journalists (such as Drew Harwell) were simply covering the suspension of @joinmastodon (discussion of which is occurring at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34007012 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34007012).
- jacquesm 4y ago
  The list is a lot longer than that. The interesting bit is that this will inevitably end with Elon banning every reporter out there because if he kills an account someone else will get assigned the 'Elon beat' and then as soon as that person pens a word that doesn't suit Elon that account will be gone too.
  - jart 4y ago
    A Twitter that's free of reporters? Where do I sign up?
    - jacooper 4y ago
      Soon enough on twitter.com
    - justahuman74 4y ago
      Head on over to twitter.com today!
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      Mastodon has been pretty good at defederating from journalism-based servers: https://www.cjr.org/analysis/journalists-want-to-recreate-twitter-on-mastodon-mastodon-is-not-into-it.php https://www.cjr.org/analysis/journalists-want-to-recreate-tw...
      - jart 4y ago
        > Among the reasons given for blocking users from the server are that it is allegedly populated by “click-bait/tabloid journalists” who “can be expected to collect, search through, and misinterpret anything you say with the goal to share this publicly to an as big audience as possible, enabling hate and harassment to any one as long as it gives them clicks [sic].” Others who have blocked the server say that its members are likely to be “surveillance capitalists” or “mainstream propagandists.” I couldn't have said it better myself.
h2odragon 4y ago
- shusaku 4y ago
  The great thing about being a hypocrite is that anytime you get criticized you can just call your detractors hypocrites.
- ethanbond 4y ago
  Uhh, they obviously can do what they want? But pre-Elon Twitter never claimed to be a bastion of Free Speech.
  - tjs8rj 4y ago
    They claimed to not moderate on the basis of political opinion but recent leaks reveal that's false.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      It actually did not. What it showed was that there was a lot of internal process around the banning of higher profile accounts and that they in fact had standards. If political opinion was the driver Trump would have been banned a lot earlier than he was.
      - dekhn 4y ago
        Anybody who's worked content moderation at scale (like, products with 100+M users) would read the description and nod along understandingly. I think they did favor some democratic narratives, but personally I feel like that's the perogative of the company.
        jacquesm 4y ago
        That's fair, but even so what I found admirable is mostly the restraint. If it had been me I would have wielded the ban hammer a lot more freely. Ditto HN by the way. And I'm saying that as the former moderator of a 1M+ active accounts community.
exogeny 4y ago
His metamorphosis into Trump is happening really quickly, isn't it? He clearly has no one close who is willing to be honest with him. Just a bunch of bootlickers (Sacks) and lackeys (Calacanis). He also looked genuinely surprised that he was booed so hard in SF; therefore you will see him lean ever harder to the one audience that will give him the adulation he needs: the authoritarian right.
- samhuk 4y ago
  I agree about the statement of being surrounded by yes-people, but how does getting booed in an SF club (which must be pretty much a badge of honor at this point?) link to the "authoritarian right"? Does that mean that SF is, or Elon at least thinks so, predominantly "authoritarian left"? And how is that any better? On the whole I think that the language from figures like Elon have indeed become too Infowars-ish, but I dont really see your angle of "not SF equals authoritarian right". At least that's what I got...?
  - exogeny 4y ago
    Did you see the clip at all? Elon looks genuinely flummoxed. He has no idea how disliked he is, because, as I said, he's surrounded by sycophantic goons. Getting repeatedly and viciously booed at a Dave Chappelle show -- regardless of where it is -- is incredibly notable. No one on the far left, even in SF, is attending that show; not since Dave forgot what it was like to be on the bottom. As far as the authoritarian right, who else do you think the Fauci tweet was aimed at? It was aimed at the only audience that remains to give him the attention he wants. Now ask yourself: who else attacks journalists? Who else acts capriciously and hypocritically while braying about free speech?
    - samhuk 4y ago
      How does getting booed at an SF club equal incredibly and generally disliked? I find your extrapolation from an extremely small sample of ~100-300 people to, what quite obviously sounds like, literally 1-10-100 million or more people, very bizarre. How is that logical? I'm quite neutral to all this political stuff. Instead, it's this mathematical nonsense of extrapolating from extremely small subsets to make extremely general sweeping statements, like "booed (not even universally) at an SF club" => "lots of people dislike Elon", that really gets to me. Also, Elon has, many times, expressed that he isn't politcally "right" or "left", so to use a very small number (1? <5?) tweets to say that an individual is "authoritarian right" is, IMHO, just the same nonsense as before.
anigbrowl 4y ago
Oh the huge manatee Honestly torn between maintaining API access to watch this shake out in real time vs encouraging him to go all in and delete production.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Give it a couple of weeks. At some point he's going to run out of Tesla stock to dip into whenever the piggy bank is empty. Oh, and this time he really is done selling.
trynewideas 4y ago
So far: Aaron Rupar, Vox https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/twitter-aaron-rupar-twitter-suspended-b2246293.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/twitter-aa... (Rupar's substack: https://aaronrupar.substack.com/ https://aaronrupar.substack.com/) Donie O'Sullivan, CNN Ryan Mac, NYT Matt Binder, Mashable Tony Webster, independent FOIA journalist https://mastodon.tonywebster.com/@tony/109520614559984242 https://mastodon.tonywebster.com/@tony/109520614559984242 Drew Harwell, Washington Post https://mastodon.social/@drewharwell/109520715471703069 https://mastodon.social/@drewharwell/109520715471703069 Micah Lee, The Intercept https://infosec.exchange/@micahflee/109520666612242764 https://infosec.exchange/@micahflee/109520666612242764 Keith Olbermann It's Going Down (IGD_News) https://kolektiva.social/@igd_news https://kolektiva.social/@igd_news
- jacooper 4y ago
  It would be helpful if anyone can add links to their mastodon accounts
  - lucideer 4y ago
    @donieosullivan@mastodon.ie Aaron, Ryan, Matt & Keith don't seem to have any (yet?)
    - stjohnswarts 4y ago
      one of the big things about mastodon to me is how do you tell someone faking an account from the actual "person" like a journalist. Go to their web page? The profile on their "magazine"/"news site"? Is it unique or is there some way via mastodon to find them?
      - lucideer 4y ago
        There's no formal way for consistent verification of a person across activitypub but Mastodon provides a way of verifying ownership of one or multiple webpages by a specific account. If an account has any links in their bio - if those links are accompanied by a checkmark they're the verified owner of that linked page. Journalists could potentially do this with author pages on their publication's websites if the publication added support. Alternatively many journalists have personal websites/blogs which they may already have verified. For example, Micah Lee & IGD News have both done this on their Mastodon profiles listed above. The other approach is just to self-host your own personal single-user instance as Tony Webster has done.
walrus01 4y ago
Twitter at this point is like watching a train wreck in real life. It's a spectacular shitshow you just can't look away from.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  A couple of people I know through Twitter said it wasn't going to be so quick even if it would happen eventually. I have to admit that the speed is something I am surprised at, I had Musk figured for more smarts than this.
- duxup 4y ago
  The heaping massive amount of debt on the company really accelerated the insanity I suspect.
- jacooper 4y ago
  It hasn't crashed yet, and honestly its taking longer than expected.
prezjordan 4y ago
The recent free speech angle many tech leaders have taken has left a horrible, horrible taste in my mouth. An article comparing trust & safety to "censorship teams" made waves all around twitter last night, including andreessen and musk. It has nothing to do with speech but everything to do with making sure they know who's in charge. None of them will say anything about this. Despicable.
- tuatoru 4y ago
  The definition of free speech is the right to talk about the doings of those in positions of authority, without fear of retribution or muzzling.
  - cmurf 4y ago
    I guess the question we need to answer is if Twitter is a public square? Or should be? I thin it's no to the first, and maybe to the second. In any case it's not currently public property, so users don't have a right to be on Twitter. But is it a place of public accommodation? And if so, how does that bind Twitter? If someone talks enough trash that it's clear they want to start a fight, a bar can kick that person out. No question. But what if they're kicked out unfairly? What is the line the bar can't cross in kicking people out, and is that a suitable line in the sand to use for Twitter? I don't know. Do we need a cyberspace public square? I think we do. Should it be Twitter? What would that look like? Public-private adventure?
    - olliej 4y ago
      Literally the entire argument musk made for re-allowing a bunch of people who had been banned for calling for LGBT people to be allowed or assaulted, or for more generally being nazi-supporting shitheads, was that twitter is a public square, and that he is a free speech absolutist. So the problem people are having is that he still gets to come out in public talking about free speech, when that is objectively bullshit, or that any of the changes being made have anything to do with "free speech".
      - 4y ago
Trouble_007 4y ago
Is the Goose ripe for plucking? One wonders if Google, Meta, Apple, Amazon are working on a replacement platform?
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Google and Meta (sorry, Facebook) already tried.
- dekhn 4y ago
  It seems unlikely that Google will attempt to re-enter the social market with a new product that competes with YouTube comments.
  - duxup 4y ago
    I liked Google+ It circles could be a little confusing but I felt like I could manage a feed… I miss that.
- mmahemoff 4y ago
  Had Google had kept Plus running, they’d probably be reaping the rewards right now, being seen as the obvious refuge for disgruntled Twitter users to migrate to instead of what exists now, which is dozens of small, fragmented, networks. Much the same way Reddit provided a natural home for Digg users after the botched v4 release. Plus was intended to defend against Facebook, but turned out to be more like Twitter without the arbitrary character limit.
- paxys 4y ago
  Why would anyone want to build a replacement and inherit all that content moderation mess? It's an unsolvable problem, and companies are now steering clear of social media for easier to monetize products.
- Balgair 4y ago
  post.news has been good for me thus far
janalsncm 4y ago
What I never understood about the “Twitter is a private company” argument is: just because Twitter is legally allowed to do something doesn’t make it moral, and doesn’t mean we should encourage them to do it. Twitter banned a lot of vile people (e.g. Alex Jones, Milo, Trump) which happened to align with popular sentiment but too many times I see legal authority conflated with moral authority.
- blamestross 4y ago
  The reason people say that is because most people say "but the first amendment" when it isn't relevant.
  - janalsncm 4y ago
    The First Amendment can only speak to what the law is, not what is moral. Again, just because it’s legal doesn’t make it moral.
    - vinay427 4y ago
      The GP comment points out that it doesn’t even have direct legal relevance, which is their point. The response about being a private company is related to that, not the question of legality vs. morality, even if it perhaps (by responding to the First Amendment claim) implicitly offer some non-zero value to legality.
xqcgrek2 4y ago
Why should "journalists" be immune from bans if they break the rules?
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Which rules now? Have they been changed again?
wnevets 4y ago
Do people on HN still believe Elon isn't destroying Twitter?
- niij 4y ago
  I was on the fence until this ElonJet & banned reporting on Elon thing. What an absolute hypocrite.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    Fauci didn't do it for you? Unsworth? Roth? Tripp?
    - rsynnott 4y ago
      I'm always fascinated by this. At this point, every couple of days Musk does something comically awful, and there are posts saying "that's it, I used to like him, but this is too much". Like, _how was all the other stuff_ not sufficient evidence that there was a problem?
      - jacquesm 4y ago
        It's a form of idol worship. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/09/big-tech-founders-gates-neumann-jobs/671519/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/09/big-tech-f...
      - lawn 4y ago
        It's cognitive dissonance, and everyone is susceptible to this. We're super good at rationalizing things when we hear conflicting information, so we can bear a lot of shit until the breaking point.
    - niij 4y ago
      Hadn't heard about them. This Twitter saga isn't something I'd base my whole personality on.
- TillE 4y ago
sethd 4y ago
Anyone still defending or apologizing for this guy needs to spend time doing some serious self-reflection about their choices in life.
paxys 4y ago
What exactly is Elon's end game for Twitter? Ban all competing companies' accounts? Ban companies that refuse to advertise on it? Ban prominent (non alt-right) journalists? Ban opposing political views? Ban parody/comedy accounts? Ban all people disagreeing with him? Eventually there will be no one left to ban other than Russian bots and the Parler/Truth Social crowd. He could have just bought one of them for a lot cheaper. This was also true a month ago, but if you work at Twitter you should really start looking for another job.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Bankruptcy. Or a firesale. Assuming there is anything left to sell.
- aschearer 4y ago
  Have you considered that he and his extremely wealthy and conservative co-investors[1] simply wanted to destroy twitter? Judging by the antipathy some on this forum pour on the site, it seems to have struck a nerve with certain people. [1]: https://slate.com/technology/2022/05/elon-musks-twitter-investors-a-guide-to-whos-who.html https://slate.com/technology/2022/05/elon-musks-twitter-inve...
  - paxys 4y ago
    Musk has put $20-$30B of his own money into Twitter, which he got by selling TSLA shares, which in turn cratered the company's share price and the value of the rest of his holdings in it. Overall he has lost 40% of his net worth (like $110 billion) this year, largely due to this single deal. No one wants to destroy anything that badly. And the funny thing is that he was easily one of the most popular personalities on Twitter even before any of this. He simply had to do...nothing.
    - aschearer 4y ago
      What you say and that he presumably has some pride, which must now be bruising, are the only reasons I doubt that it's all intentional. Truly, it's incredible that he could self-own himself to this degree. As you say, he was on top of the world, and now...
tonfreed 4y ago
I mean, unnecessary but funny. I'd like to see how many of them smugly posted "well go create your own Twitter" in the wake of 2016 and again in 2020 over the pandemic coverage. If they're as popular as they seen to think they are, they'll have no problem taking their audience across to a new platform.
- lucideer 4y ago
  Sign up numbers on the instances of mastodon that they've since migrated to would seem to indicate that they are. Some have paused processing registration queues due to the rush.
  - tonfreed 4y ago
    I for one welcome the resurgence of decentralized internet forums. Twitter can be fun, but it shouldn't be the only game in town
paxys 4y ago
Now is the time the "I like Elon because he is a free speech absolutist" crowd will start to gaslight and say that this is good for Twitter and that it was never about free speech for them at all.
- faefox 4y ago
  It's never been about free speech.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    The best explanation I have seen to date is that it really was about being able to sell a whole raft of TSLA without cratering the market. That he ended up actually having to buy Twitter was a bit of a complication, the whole 'Champion of Free Speech' thing came later.
    - zwkrt 4y ago
      This doesn’t make any sense at all. If buying twitter was just a complication, why is he being so active in it? If I found myself accidentally buying a company outside my wheelhouse, I would find some suitable management and not touch it an all. Or make small changes, Berkshire Hathaway style. Not take the helm and for everyone.
      - jacquesm 4y ago
        > If buying twitter was just a complication, why is he being so active in it? Because it strokes his ego. > If I found myself accidentally buying a company outside my wheelhouse, I would find some suitable management and not touch it an all. That would make good sense. > Or make small changes, Berkshire Hathaway style. Not take the helm and for everyone. Clearly, you are not Elon Musk, but I agree that your approach would make a lot more sense.
        lern_too_spel 4y ago
        The market is acting as if the Twitter purchase was financed in part by a margin loan on Musk's TSLA shares. https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/margin-calls-fire-sales-why-elons-twitter-blowup-could-crash-tsla-stock https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/margin-calls-fire-sales-why-.... If Tesla can't show growth beating market expectations, or if he can't get money out of Twitter, or if the Fed keeps raising rates, he could be forced to sell TSLA shares to deleverage, so the worse the Twitter situation looks, the more investors avoid TSLA, compounding his problems. I am convinced at this point that the "cloudy head" that Musk reported during his first COVID infection pre-vaccination is an ongoing medical condition, perhaps a mild encephalitis, leading to rash actions because the brain fog renders him incapable of thinking through consequences . https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-musk/elon-musk-says-most-likely-has-a-moderate-case-of-covid-19-idUSKBN27V017 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-musk/e...
Havoc 4y ago
On the plus side at this rate we’ll find out what Musk’s end game for Twitter is sooner rather than later
- jacquesm 4y ago
  You may want to bring some marshmallows to roast over the embers.
photoGrant 4y ago
Elon Musk changes name to Barbara Streisand
- jacquesm 4y ago
  One tweet already quipped that the Streisand effect will be renamed after this.
deleted 4y ago
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deleted 4y ago
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paxys 4y ago
Waiting for him to release the "Twitter files" that show why he made this decision.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
justahuman74 4y ago
At some point, people are going to ask if he's (national security) safe to be running SpaceX
- Balgair 4y ago
  True, but it's not like the DoD isn't already experienced with lunatics in charge of things.
throwaway888abc 4y ago
You should be able to speak your mind and find credible information easily. Twitter is an open service that’s home to a world of diverse people, perspectives, ideas and information. We’re committed to protecting the health of the public conversation — and we take that commitment seriously. Account and service integrity We do our best to keep people with bad intent from creating or maintaining accounts, compromising the accounts of others, or artificially boosting harmful content. This helps us protect the safety, security, and credibility of Twitter accounts. https://about.twitter.com/en/our-priorities/healthy-conversations https://about.twitter.com/en/our-priorities/healthy-conversa...
egberts1 4y ago
The readers should be asking “why?” instead of harping. There was an incident involving Elon’s son X shortly after the airport pickup, and it involved a very threatening stalker wearing mask and black sock-puppets, on one hand is an outline of a gun underneath the hand-sock. He jumped on the hood of the car (a felony in California). The escort driver (bodygaurd?) started filming the stalker, captured and posted his DMV-mandated un-obscured but dealer-issued auto license plate for all to see. One journalist started doxxing a live location of Elon’s child, which of course all who retweeted got the swift ban hammer. And @elonjet tracker got suspended for posting live manifest instead of its usual flight path/plan. And more who retweeted its FAA manifest (but flight plan is ok) got banned as well. So, there’s more to the story than media are letting on and it is all plainly seen on Twitter.
- Dracophoenix 4y ago
  > And journalists started doxxing Elon, which of course all who retweeted got the swift ban hammer. A journalist's job is to gather, compile, and publish information regardless of how flattering or unflattering the publication portrays its subject. Much of this information is obtained from public records, leaks, and anonymous insiders. What you call doxxing is investigative reporting. Whether he comprehends it or not, Musk is repeating his predecessors' tactics during Hunter Biden and Wuhan Lab Theory fiascos. Rather ironic.
  - egberts1 4y ago
    It is doxxing when a lone journalist is posting a live location of a child. Thereby all who retweeted too got banned. Kidnapping opportunity, anyone? This is a protective and proactive parental prerogative there.
xaxaxb 4y ago
It's raining vengeance.
antoniuschan99 4y ago
This Youtuber Modern Mba did a video on Twitters history. It’s quite informative of all the backstabbing and betrayal that has gone on in the company so far https://youtu.be/DudWfJXHN9g https://youtu.be/DudWfJXHN9g
antifanboy 4y ago
I really enjoy watching elon’s billionaire tandian fan club rush onto twitter to defend him. cyan Bannister, Mike Solana, Garry Tan, most of the YC crowd, etc. If I hadn’t met all of these clowns I would assume they were all bots It’s like being at a donkey show, but instead of the girl sucking the donkey, the vip row is doing it
jdmtheNth 4y ago
Thankfully, we have Bari Weiss and co keeping us in the loop, with less-biased reporting.
wdb 4y ago
So newspapers that like to dox other people in their articles they link to on Twitter are angry they got suspended?
- jacooper 4y ago
  What doxing? Elons jet location is public information, quit buying into his BS.

253 points by jacooper 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

minimaxir 4y ago

I legitimately can't think of a way Elon can spin this. This is beyond free speech hypocrisy.

ethanbond 4y ago
He doesn’t need to. His legion of cult fanboys will not even bat an eye.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Already happening, even in this thread.
clouddrover 4y ago
Musk is an authoritarian at heart. Hypocrisy is the expression of his authority.
paxys 4y ago
"I just banned fake news and wokeness from Twitter. Isn't this place better than ever?" – Elon "Yes sir, you totally owned the libs. Could you build a self driving boat?" - fanboys "On it. Will be launched next year." – Elon
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Some of the comments in that thread actually mirror yours closely.
- antifanboy 4y ago
  Reminds me of my favorite line of his horse shit: <random wealthy sycophant> You should sue BLM and Anti-Fa for tortuous interference and forcing the advertisers to flee. Mosque: lawyers are already on it. elon believrs in free speech as much as peter thiel does. Free for me, not for thee.
abvdasker 4y ago
All it took was a crowd booing him for Musk to get so bent out of shape that he abandoned all pretenses of being in favor of free speech. That must have really hurt his feelings.

djaouen 4y ago

The egomaniac is now on his “Free Speech For All… Except For You” phase of his tour.

jacquesm 4y ago

Anybody surprised? They're lucky he didn't sick his army of stans on them. This is going to be a giant run of whack-a-mole with the moles being the journalists reporting on each other being banned.

Balgair 4y ago
I mean, some of the journalists that he's banned tonight are pretty well hated by a lot of people already. A few thousand more trolls and dozen more death threats in their social media isn't really going to move much for them.

jacooper 4y ago

Twitter also suspended mastodon's account. Can you really say twitter, when its clearly Musk who's doing this? I really hope Mastodon will get some momentum now. (at its peak it was around 2000 per hour) https://bitcoinhackers.org/@mastodonusercount https://bitcoinhackers.org/@mastodonusercount

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jacooper 4y ago
Apperantly he is banning journalists who are reporting on other journalists getting banned? https://twitter.com/WillOremus/status/1603557341730902018 https://twitter.com/WillOremus/status/1603557341730902018
- onphonenow 4y ago
  I think it’s about journalists trying to keep the live location thing going which Twitter tos was updated to ban (reporting someone’s live location on Twitter is considered doxing)
  - z7 4y ago
    This might be the first post in this thread stating the alleged actual reason for the bans: they posted screenshots of the location tracking or linked to the Mastodon tracker account, breaking the rule against sharing real-time locations. That's the claim at least. Also, Musk states that these bans are not permanent and the accounts will be reinstated: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603591994244071424 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603591994244071424 He also posted a poll on the suspension time: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603609466301059073 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603609466301059073
    - dyno12345 4y ago
      supposedly some of them only reported the LAPD statement saying no police report had been filed for the alleged stalking incident

elahieh 4y ago

It is hard to follow the chains of banning because they happen so fast, but @donie was apparently suspended for posting a quote from LAPD: "LAPD's Threat Management Unit (TMU) is aware of the situation and tweet by Elon Musk and is in contact with his representatives and security team. No crime reports have been filed yet." Then @MattBinder posted "uh i just shared this straight news update just posted by @donie and moments later he's suspended" (with a screenshot of that) and got banned himself. So it's not just links to ElonJet, or links to reporting about that, it's anything Elon related. That place is burning up fast.

jacquesm 4y ago
Bellingcat did their usual trick and came up with a location for that video, it wasn't anywhere near an airport.
- Balgair 4y ago
  link? that sounds like a good read
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    Already posted that in another comment: https://twitter.com/eliothiggins/status/1603454821700452365 https://twitter.com/eliothiggins/status/1603454821700452365
lucideer 4y ago
Musk is using claims of "doxxing" to garner support for his opposition to ElonJet & his claims of stalking in LA are central to that. Boosting of the LAPD's statement that "No crime reports have been filed" weakens the plausibility of his general campaign against ElonJet, so I'd say that's the specific connection here.

dottjt 4y ago

I get the sense that a lot of these suspensions are due to the moderation teams within twitter being decimated, and instead having all this functionality automated within Twitter.

Finnucane 4y ago
Maybe. I mean, on my mastodon feed, I have a filter to automatically skip over any mention of 'twitter', 'elon', or 'musk'. I guess they're doing the same thing?
- ngoilapites 4y ago
  GREAT to know about these filters, thanks!

lapcat 4y ago

From what I've seen of Twitter screenshots, some of these journalists (such as Drew Harwell) were simply covering the suspension of @joinmastodon (discussion of which is occurring at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34007012 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34007012).

jacquesm 4y ago
The list is a lot longer than that. The interesting bit is that this will inevitably end with Elon banning every reporter out there because if he kills an account someone else will get assigned the 'Elon beat' and then as soon as that person pens a word that doesn't suit Elon that account will be gone too.
- jart 4y ago
  A Twitter that's free of reporters? Where do I sign up?
  - jacooper 4y ago
    Soon enough on twitter.com
  - justahuman74 4y ago
    Head on over to twitter.com today!
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    Mastodon has been pretty good at defederating from journalism-based servers: https://www.cjr.org/analysis/journalists-want-to-recreate-twitter-on-mastodon-mastodon-is-not-into-it.php https://www.cjr.org/analysis/journalists-want-to-recreate-tw...
    - jart 4y ago
      > Among the reasons given for blocking users from the server are that it is allegedly populated by “click-bait/tabloid journalists” who “can be expected to collect, search through, and misinterpret anything you say with the goal to share this publicly to an as big audience as possible, enabling hate and harassment to any one as long as it gives them clicks [sic].” Others who have blocked the server say that its members are likely to be “surveillance capitalists” or “mainstream propagandists.” I couldn't have said it better myself.

h2odragon 4y ago

shusaku 4y ago
The great thing about being a hypocrite is that anytime you get criticized you can just call your detractors hypocrites.
ethanbond 4y ago
Uhh, they obviously can do what they want? But pre-Elon Twitter never claimed to be a bastion of Free Speech.
- tjs8rj 4y ago
  They claimed to not moderate on the basis of political opinion but recent leaks reveal that's false.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    It actually did not. What it showed was that there was a lot of internal process around the banning of higher profile accounts and that they in fact had standards. If political opinion was the driver Trump would have been banned a lot earlier than he was.
    - dekhn 4y ago
      Anybody who's worked content moderation at scale (like, products with 100+M users) would read the description and nod along understandingly. I think they did favor some democratic narratives, but personally I feel like that's the perogative of the company.
      - jacquesm 4y ago
        That's fair, but even so what I found admirable is mostly the restraint. If it had been me I would have wielded the ban hammer a lot more freely. Ditto HN by the way. And I'm saying that as the former moderator of a 1M+ active accounts community.

exogeny 4y ago

His metamorphosis into Trump is happening really quickly, isn't it? He clearly has no one close who is willing to be honest with him. Just a bunch of bootlickers (Sacks) and lackeys (Calacanis). He also looked genuinely surprised that he was booed so hard in SF; therefore you will see him lean ever harder to the one audience that will give him the adulation he needs: the authoritarian right.

samhuk 4y ago
I agree about the statement of being surrounded by yes-people, but how does getting booed in an SF club (which must be pretty much a badge of honor at this point?) link to the "authoritarian right"? Does that mean that SF is, or Elon at least thinks so, predominantly "authoritarian left"? And how is that any better? On the whole I think that the language from figures like Elon have indeed become too Infowars-ish, but I dont really see your angle of "not SF equals authoritarian right". At least that's what I got...?
- exogeny 4y ago
  Did you see the clip at all? Elon looks genuinely flummoxed. He has no idea how disliked he is, because, as I said, he's surrounded by sycophantic goons. Getting repeatedly and viciously booed at a Dave Chappelle show -- regardless of where it is -- is incredibly notable. No one on the far left, even in SF, is attending that show; not since Dave forgot what it was like to be on the bottom. As far as the authoritarian right, who else do you think the Fauci tweet was aimed at? It was aimed at the only audience that remains to give him the attention he wants. Now ask yourself: who else attacks journalists? Who else acts capriciously and hypocritically while braying about free speech?
  - samhuk 4y ago
    How does getting booed at an SF club equal incredibly and generally disliked? I find your extrapolation from an extremely small sample of ~100-300 people to, what quite obviously sounds like, literally 1-10-100 million or more people, very bizarre. How is that logical? I'm quite neutral to all this political stuff. Instead, it's this mathematical nonsense of extrapolating from extremely small subsets to make extremely general sweeping statements, like "booed (not even universally) at an SF club" => "lots of people dislike Elon", that really gets to me. Also, Elon has, many times, expressed that he isn't politcally "right" or "left", so to use a very small number (1? <5?) tweets to say that an individual is "authoritarian right" is, IMHO, just the same nonsense as before.

anigbrowl 4y ago

Oh the huge manatee Honestly torn between maintaining API access to watch this shake out in real time vs encouraging him to go all in and delete production.

jacquesm 4y ago
Give it a couple of weeks. At some point he's going to run out of Tesla stock to dip into whenever the piggy bank is empty. Oh, and this time he really is done selling.

trynewideas 4y ago

So far: Aaron Rupar, Vox https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/twitter-aaron-rupar-twitter-suspended-b2246293.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/twitter-aa... (Rupar's substack: https://aaronrupar.substack.com/ https://aaronrupar.substack.com/) Donie O'Sullivan, CNN Ryan Mac, NYT Matt Binder, Mashable Tony Webster, independent FOIA journalist https://mastodon.tonywebster.com/@tony/109520614559984242 https://mastodon.tonywebster.com/@tony/109520614559984242 Drew Harwell, Washington Post https://mastodon.social/@drewharwell/109520715471703069 https://mastodon.social/@drewharwell/109520715471703069 Micah Lee, The Intercept https://infosec.exchange/@micahflee/109520666612242764 https://infosec.exchange/@micahflee/109520666612242764 Keith Olbermann It's Going Down (IGD_News) https://kolektiva.social/@igd_news https://kolektiva.social/@igd_news

jacooper 4y ago
It would be helpful if anyone can add links to their mastodon accounts
- lucideer 4y ago
  @donieosullivan@mastodon.ie Aaron, Ryan, Matt & Keith don't seem to have any (yet?)
  - stjohnswarts 4y ago
    one of the big things about mastodon to me is how do you tell someone faking an account from the actual "person" like a journalist. Go to their web page? The profile on their "magazine"/"news site"? Is it unique or is there some way via mastodon to find them?
    - lucideer 4y ago
      There's no formal way for consistent verification of a person across activitypub but Mastodon provides a way of verifying ownership of one or multiple webpages by a specific account. If an account has any links in their bio - if those links are accompanied by a checkmark they're the verified owner of that linked page. Journalists could potentially do this with author pages on their publication's websites if the publication added support. Alternatively many journalists have personal websites/blogs which they may already have verified. For example, Micah Lee & IGD News have both done this on their Mastodon profiles listed above. The other approach is just to self-host your own personal single-user instance as Tony Webster has done.

walrus01 4y ago

Twitter at this point is like watching a train wreck in real life. It's a spectacular shitshow you just can't look away from.

jacquesm 4y ago
A couple of people I know through Twitter said it wasn't going to be so quick even if it would happen eventually. I have to admit that the speed is something I am surprised at, I had Musk figured for more smarts than this.
duxup 4y ago
The heaping massive amount of debt on the company really accelerated the insanity I suspect.
jacooper 4y ago
It hasn't crashed yet, and honestly its taking longer than expected.

prezjordan 4y ago

The recent free speech angle many tech leaders have taken has left a horrible, horrible taste in my mouth. An article comparing trust & safety to "censorship teams" made waves all around twitter last night, including andreessen and musk. It has nothing to do with speech but everything to do with making sure they know who's in charge. None of them will say anything about this. Despicable.

tuatoru 4y ago
The definition of free speech is the right to talk about the doings of those in positions of authority, without fear of retribution or muzzling.
- cmurf 4y ago
  I guess the question we need to answer is if Twitter is a public square? Or should be? I thin it's no to the first, and maybe to the second. In any case it's not currently public property, so users don't have a right to be on Twitter. But is it a place of public accommodation? And if so, how does that bind Twitter? If someone talks enough trash that it's clear they want to start a fight, a bar can kick that person out. No question. But what if they're kicked out unfairly? What is the line the bar can't cross in kicking people out, and is that a suitable line in the sand to use for Twitter? I don't know. Do we need a cyberspace public square? I think we do. Should it be Twitter? What would that look like? Public-private adventure?
  - olliej 4y ago
    Literally the entire argument musk made for re-allowing a bunch of people who had been banned for calling for LGBT people to be allowed or assaulted, or for more generally being nazi-supporting shitheads, was that twitter is a public square, and that he is a free speech absolutist. So the problem people are having is that he still gets to come out in public talking about free speech, when that is objectively bullshit, or that any of the changes being made have anything to do with "free speech".
    - 4y ago

Trouble_007 4y ago

Is the Goose ripe for plucking? One wonders if Google, Meta, Apple, Amazon are working on a replacement platform?

jacquesm 4y ago
Google and Meta (sorry, Facebook) already tried.
dekhn 4y ago
It seems unlikely that Google will attempt to re-enter the social market with a new product that competes with YouTube comments.
- duxup 4y ago
  I liked Google+ It circles could be a little confusing but I felt like I could manage a feed… I miss that.
mmahemoff 4y ago
Had Google had kept Plus running, they’d probably be reaping the rewards right now, being seen as the obvious refuge for disgruntled Twitter users to migrate to instead of what exists now, which is dozens of small, fragmented, networks. Much the same way Reddit provided a natural home for Digg users after the botched v4 release. Plus was intended to defend against Facebook, but turned out to be more like Twitter without the arbitrary character limit.
paxys 4y ago
Why would anyone want to build a replacement and inherit all that content moderation mess? It's an unsolvable problem, and companies are now steering clear of social media for easier to monetize products.
Balgair 4y ago
post.news has been good for me thus far

janalsncm 4y ago

What I never understood about the “Twitter is a private company” argument is: just because Twitter is legally allowed to do something doesn’t make it moral, and doesn’t mean we should encourage them to do it. Twitter banned a lot of vile people (e.g. Alex Jones, Milo, Trump) which happened to align with popular sentiment but too many times I see legal authority conflated with moral authority.

blamestross 4y ago
The reason people say that is because most people say "but the first amendment" when it isn't relevant.
- janalsncm 4y ago
  The First Amendment can only speak to what the law is, not what is moral. Again, just because it’s legal doesn’t make it moral.
  - vinay427 4y ago
    The GP comment points out that it doesn’t even have direct legal relevance, which is their point. The response about being a private company is related to that, not the question of legality vs. morality, even if it perhaps (by responding to the First Amendment claim) implicitly offer some non-zero value to legality.

xqcgrek2 4y ago

Why should "journalists" be immune from bans if they break the rules?

jacquesm 4y ago
Which rules now? Have they been changed again?

wnevets 4y ago

Do people on HN still believe Elon isn't destroying Twitter?

niij 4y ago
I was on the fence until this ElonJet & banned reporting on Elon thing. What an absolute hypocrite.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Fauci didn't do it for you? Unsworth? Roth? Tripp?
  - rsynnott 4y ago
    I'm always fascinated by this. At this point, every couple of days Musk does something comically awful, and there are posts saying "that's it, I used to like him, but this is too much". Like, _how was all the other stuff_ not sufficient evidence that there was a problem?
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      It's a form of idol worship. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/09/big-tech-founders-gates-neumann-jobs/671519/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/09/big-tech-f...
    - lawn 4y ago
      It's cognitive dissonance, and everyone is susceptible to this. We're super good at rationalizing things when we hear conflicting information, so we can bear a lot of shit until the breaking point.
  - niij 4y ago
    Hadn't heard about them. This Twitter saga isn't something I'd base my whole personality on.
TillE 4y ago

sethd 4y ago

Anyone still defending or apologizing for this guy needs to spend time doing some serious self-reflection about their choices in life.

paxys 4y ago

What exactly is Elon's end game for Twitter? Ban all competing companies' accounts? Ban companies that refuse to advertise on it? Ban prominent (non alt-right) journalists? Ban opposing political views? Ban parody/comedy accounts? Ban all people disagreeing with him? Eventually there will be no one left to ban other than Russian bots and the Parler/Truth Social crowd. He could have just bought one of them for a lot cheaper. This was also true a month ago, but if you work at Twitter you should really start looking for another job.

jacquesm 4y ago
Bankruptcy. Or a firesale. Assuming there is anything left to sell.
aschearer 4y ago
Have you considered that he and his extremely wealthy and conservative co-investors[1] simply wanted to destroy twitter? Judging by the antipathy some on this forum pour on the site, it seems to have struck a nerve with certain people. [1]: https://slate.com/technology/2022/05/elon-musks-twitter-investors-a-guide-to-whos-who.html https://slate.com/technology/2022/05/elon-musks-twitter-inve...
- paxys 4y ago
  Musk has put $20-$30B of his own money into Twitter, which he got by selling TSLA shares, which in turn cratered the company's share price and the value of the rest of his holdings in it. Overall he has lost 40% of his net worth (like $110 billion) this year, largely due to this single deal. No one wants to destroy anything that badly. And the funny thing is that he was easily one of the most popular personalities on Twitter even before any of this. He simply had to do...nothing.
  - aschearer 4y ago
    What you say and that he presumably has some pride, which must now be bruising, are the only reasons I doubt that it's all intentional. Truly, it's incredible that he could self-own himself to this degree. As you say, he was on top of the world, and now...

tonfreed 4y ago

I mean, unnecessary but funny. I'd like to see how many of them smugly posted "well go create your own Twitter" in the wake of 2016 and again in 2020 over the pandemic coverage. If they're as popular as they seen to think they are, they'll have no problem taking their audience across to a new platform.

lucideer 4y ago
Sign up numbers on the instances of mastodon that they've since migrated to would seem to indicate that they are. Some have paused processing registration queues due to the rush.
- tonfreed 4y ago
  I for one welcome the resurgence of decentralized internet forums. Twitter can be fun, but it shouldn't be the only game in town

paxys 4y ago

Now is the time the "I like Elon because he is a free speech absolutist" crowd will start to gaslight and say that this is good for Twitter and that it was never about free speech for them at all.

faefox 4y ago
It's never been about free speech.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  The best explanation I have seen to date is that it really was about being able to sell a whole raft of TSLA without cratering the market. That he ended up actually having to buy Twitter was a bit of a complication, the whole 'Champion of Free Speech' thing came later.
  - zwkrt 4y ago
    This doesn’t make any sense at all. If buying twitter was just a complication, why is he being so active in it? If I found myself accidentally buying a company outside my wheelhouse, I would find some suitable management and not touch it an all. Or make small changes, Berkshire Hathaway style. Not take the helm and for everyone.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      > If buying twitter was just a complication, why is he being so active in it? Because it strokes his ego. > If I found myself accidentally buying a company outside my wheelhouse, I would find some suitable management and not touch it an all. That would make good sense. > Or make small changes, Berkshire Hathaway style. Not take the helm and for everyone. Clearly, you are not Elon Musk, but I agree that your approach would make a lot more sense.
      - lern_too_spel 4y ago
        The market is acting as if the Twitter purchase was financed in part by a margin loan on Musk's TSLA shares. https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/margin-calls-fire-sales-why-elons-twitter-blowup-could-crash-tsla-stock https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/margin-calls-fire-sales-why-.... If Tesla can't show growth beating market expectations, or if he can't get money out of Twitter, or if the Fed keeps raising rates, he could be forced to sell TSLA shares to deleverage, so the worse the Twitter situation looks, the more investors avoid TSLA, compounding his problems. I am convinced at this point that the "cloudy head" that Musk reported during his first COVID infection pre-vaccination is an ongoing medical condition, perhaps a mild encephalitis, leading to rash actions because the brain fog renders him incapable of thinking through consequences . https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-musk/elon-musk-says-most-likely-has-a-moderate-case-of-covid-19-idUSKBN27V017 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-musk/e...

Havoc 4y ago

On the plus side at this rate we’ll find out what Musk’s end game for Twitter is sooner rather than later

jacquesm 4y ago
You may want to bring some marshmallows to roast over the embers.

photoGrant 4y ago

Elon Musk changes name to Barbara Streisand

jacquesm 4y ago
One tweet already quipped that the Streisand effect will be renamed after this.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

deleted 4y ago

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paxys 4y ago

Waiting for him to release the "Twitter files" that show why he made this decision.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

justahuman74 4y ago

At some point, people are going to ask if he's (national security) safe to be running SpaceX

Balgair 4y ago
True, but it's not like the DoD isn't already experienced with lunatics in charge of things.

throwaway888abc 4y ago

You should be able to speak your mind and find credible information easily. Twitter is an open service that’s home to a world of diverse people, perspectives, ideas and information. We’re committed to protecting the health of the public conversation — and we take that commitment seriously. Account and service integrity We do our best to keep people with bad intent from creating or maintaining accounts, compromising the accounts of others, or artificially boosting harmful content. This helps us protect the safety, security, and credibility of Twitter accounts. https://about.twitter.com/en/our-priorities/healthy-conversations https://about.twitter.com/en/our-priorities/healthy-conversa...

egberts1 4y ago

The readers should be asking “why?” instead of harping. There was an incident involving Elon’s son X shortly after the airport pickup, and it involved a very threatening stalker wearing mask and black sock-puppets, on one hand is an outline of a gun underneath the hand-sock. He jumped on the hood of the car (a felony in California). The escort driver (bodygaurd?) started filming the stalker, captured and posted his DMV-mandated un-obscured but dealer-issued auto license plate for all to see. One journalist started doxxing a live location of Elon’s child, which of course all who retweeted got the swift ban hammer. And @elonjet tracker got suspended for posting live manifest instead of its usual flight path/plan. And more who retweeted its FAA manifest (but flight plan is ok) got banned as well. So, there’s more to the story than media are letting on and it is all plainly seen on Twitter.

Dracophoenix 4y ago
> And journalists started doxxing Elon, which of course all who retweeted got the swift ban hammer. A journalist's job is to gather, compile, and publish information regardless of how flattering or unflattering the publication portrays its subject. Much of this information is obtained from public records, leaks, and anonymous insiders. What you call doxxing is investigative reporting. Whether he comprehends it or not, Musk is repeating his predecessors' tactics during Hunter Biden and Wuhan Lab Theory fiascos. Rather ironic.
- egberts1 4y ago
  It is doxxing when a lone journalist is posting a live location of a child. Thereby all who retweeted too got banned. Kidnapping opportunity, anyone? This is a protective and proactive parental prerogative there.

xaxaxb 4y ago

It's raining vengeance.

antoniuschan99 4y ago

This Youtuber Modern Mba did a video on Twitters history. It’s quite informative of all the backstabbing and betrayal that has gone on in the company so far https://youtu.be/DudWfJXHN9g https://youtu.be/DudWfJXHN9g

antifanboy 4y ago

I really enjoy watching elon’s billionaire tandian fan club rush onto twitter to defend him. cyan Bannister, Mike Solana, Garry Tan, most of the YC crowd, etc. If I hadn’t met all of these clowns I would assume they were all bots It’s like being at a donkey show, but instead of the girl sucking the donkey, the vip row is doing it

jdmtheNth 4y ago

Thankfully, we have Bari Weiss and co keeping us in the loop, with less-biased reporting.

wdb 4y ago

So newspapers that like to dox other people in their articles they link to on Twitter are angry they got suspended?

jacooper 4y ago
What doxing? Elons jet location is public information, quit buying into his BS.