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The wave of bans from the muskjet thing has been quite dramatic. It'll be interesting to see if the people who've been lauding musk for his supposedly pro free

• mexicanandre 4y ago
  Look at the responses. They are all cheering it. Pathetic
  • asteroidbelt 4y ago
    Doxxing is a common attack on people who are guilty of wrongspeak. I have no strong opinion about how doxxing relates to free speech, but desire to hide your private life is understandable, and I don't see any benefit for the society from realtime doxxing.
  • c54 4y ago
    Sadly predictable...
    • Georgelemental 4y ago
      Please don't make blanket statements like that. Personally I'm disappointed by this turn of events
  • x86_64Ubuntu 4y ago
    Or they are quiet, as they are getting the results that they've wanted and that the time of propping up ridiculous Free Speech Absolutism arguments has passed.
    • philosopher1234 4y ago
      We should thank musk for showing us what a billionaire and their leaches really are.
• TigeriusKirk 4y ago
  I think he was legit shaken by the incident with the kook stalker and his son. Which is certainly understandable. People need to dial the hate way down. Way, way down. And the rule change was quite clear that linking to the jet tracking was prohibited. That all said, he's gone too far here. And it's an unwinnable fight anyway.
  • x86_64Ubuntu 4y ago
    So what would banning a jet tracking account have to do with a stalker (for which no police report was filed)? And why ban journalists? In addition, the rule change was just to enable the banning of the jet tracking, not because it was it came from some higher sense of duty.
    • Ukv 4y ago
      > So what would banning a jet tracking account have to do with a stalker From what I can gather and infer, a couple of days ago Musk's son got off the jet and into a car, then that car was attacked by a stalker looking for Musk himself. Musk believes that the stalker got the information from the ElonJet Twitter account.
      • xcrunner529 4y ago
        It was days after and nowhere near the airport. And again, no police report filed. You were dooped.
        • Ukv 4y ago
          > It was days after and nowhere near the airport. > [Other comment:] days after. so by musk's own rules.. fine to post. wasn't real time. Location of the jet was shared in real-time to my understanding, checking with the link given on https://grndcntrl.net/falconlanding/ https://grndcntrl.net/falconlanding/ > And again, no police report filed. You were dooped. I see a video of the supposed stalker in a balaclava. I do think Musk took the opportunity to get rid of something he already disliked, but I don't yet believe he faked the attack if that's what you're implying.
• eggy 4y ago
  Oh, just like when pre-Musk Twitter banned NY Post/journalists over a true story about Hunter Biden's laptop. I don't see how an anti-doxxing rule banning people tracking Elon Musk's whereabouts is worse.
  • Georgelemental 4y ago
    Both. Both acts of censorship are bad
    • option 4y ago
      exactly. this is something both left and right should fully agree on
    • eggy 4y ago
      I agree. I wanted to present the opposite side to make sure short-term memories remembered.
  • richbell 4y ago
    > Oh, just like when pre-Musk Twitter banned NY Post/journalists over a true story about Hunter Biden's laptop. I don't see how an anti-doxxing rule banning people tracking Elon Musk's whereabouts is worse. Calling it "Hunter Biden's laptop" ignores the fact that it was hacked information provided by a foreign adversary to sow division and influence an election. That is not comparable to sharing publicly available information about aircraft movements. That being said, I also think the extent to which they went to bury and remove the real photos and videos of Hunter Biden smoking crack was a huge overreach. They tried to paint it as a conspiracy theory that had no factual basis — that's biased censorship.
    • Georgelemental 4y ago
      > it was hacked information provided by a foreign adversary to sow division and influence an election. Every single one of these claims is false. Hunter Biden gave his laptop to a repair shop, the repair shop shared its contents with the New York Post and the FBI. At no point was any foreign agent involved, at no point was anything "hacked"
• xupybd 4y ago
  I was excited to see his pro free speech approach and this ban wave disappoints me. I'm actually okay with bans, suspensions and all the rest. But only if there is the following - A redemptive path back - Due process - Transparency - Fair application of the rules. These recent bans have had none of that. The rule change should have been announced before the bans. There should have been warnings to remove the tweets before instant bans. The accounts should be given the opportunity to comply with the rules and come back. While I'm sad Elon has taken this turn I still don't think Twitter is any worse off. They did this before just to a different group. At least they appear to be making progress on removing child exploitation. I don't know if the platform can survive the disruption and unpredictably that Musk has introduced but from a moral standing, removing child exploitation wins a lot of points with me.
  • x86_64Ubuntu 4y ago
    You don't find it telling that you have to rope in child exploitation to add weight to the scales in favor of Elon Musk?
    • jacquesm 4y ago
      For which there is nil evidence.
    • xupybd 4y ago
      Yes, I had hoped that was evident in my post. If he had not done that I would not have had anything good to say about his work at Twitter so far.
      • xcrunner529 4y ago
        He’s not done anything except fire the team responsible for monitoring it working collaboratively with other groups on tools. Oh, and and talking loudly. Are you always this easily fooled?
        • xupybd 4y ago
• runarberg 4y ago
  That is normally not how cults work—and yes, I am claiming elon is a cult. When a cult leader fails to deliver, or otherwise issues a prediction that never materializes, the cult member usually grow stronger in the cult’s convictions. This is kind of a counterintuitive psychological phenomena but it has been demonstrated quite a few times. There may be something of a cognitive dissonance driving this. It is that after you see your cult leader fail, you can either dismiss all your prior believes, or change your version of reality to match the cult’s altered dogma. It seems as if doing the latter is easier for most people, so this is in turn what most people do.
  • jacquesm 4y ago
    At this point the Kool-Aid can't be far off.
    • runarberg 4y ago
      I doubt it. As your sibling points out, the Jonestown massacre had its member much more psychologically manipulated then Elon could even dream of. While I still stand by me calling Elon a cult, there is definitely a huge difference between him and Jim Jones, and how much manipulation members of each cult have endured.
    • drcongo 4y ago
      I hope so.
  • DoreenMichele 4y ago
    I would be interested in seeing some citations to back up that claim. The famous Jonestown incident was a case of people having left everything they knew, relocated to an isolated place in a different country, etc. And even then, some members of the cult were forced to drink the poisoned kool-aid and some drank it not knowing it was poisoned. Residents of the commune later committed suicide by drinking a flavored beverage laced with potassium cyanide; some were forced to drink it, some (such as small children) drank it unknowingly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_the_Kool-Aid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_the_Kool-Aid I have a longstanding interest in social psychology and the way a cult generally arranges to control people is to cut them off financially, socially, etc. This is the same way that abusive husbands typically treat their abused wives. One study sought to identify character traits that made abused women more likely to kill their abusive husband and could not do so. Instead, they found that the women who murdered their abusive husbands were the most isolated, the most abused, the most painted into a corner. In short, they were women who found themselves with no other way out. I suppose if you work for the man or are enthralled by his billions or some such, that's going to hold sway for some people. But I have trouble comparing his Twitter debacle to what cults do. Anyway, just rambling on. Not actually interested in discussing this Twitter mess that I am mostly trying to avoid discussing in spite of the entire world seeming to discuss nothing else. But if you have some citations to back up your social psychology related statement, I would be interested in seeing those as it's an area of interest of mine.
• programmarchy 4y ago
  Doxxing adds nothing to the conversation. It’s not an opinion, an argument, or an artful expression — forms that free speech laws are designed to protect. Rather, doxxing is merely harassment and adds nothing substantive. Same argument can be made for racial slurs and the like. Anyone pretending otherwise is being disingenuous.
  • Zigurd 4y ago
    Plane tracking is a significant form of OSINT for some investors.
    • programmarchy 4y ago
      That’s obviously not the motivation of ElonJet. Again, disingenuous. If there was anything substantive about ElonJet, it would have been the statistics on jet fuel consumption, because that makes a statement about hypocrisy. They could have posted that without revealing locations, which crosses the line to singling out an individual for the purpose of harassment.
      • Zigurd 4y ago
        The location of his plane is very relevant to anyone looking to see if he might pay attention to Tesla, again, someday.
        • programmarchy 4y ago
          I’ll amend my previous statement and instead say that some people are being disingenuous and others are simply obtuse.
        • jacquesm 4y ago
          Or if he's visiting Russia. The degree to which Musk is upset by this makes me wonder if there isn't something more to it than just 'personal safety' concerns fed by paranoia. It may well be that the location of his plane tells a story that he does not want exposed. Because frankly the amount of goodwill that he's burning over this makes no sense at all.
• bl_valance 4y ago
  I agreed with most of what he's done up to the point where he banned ElonJet, and now these journalists. It's so dumb to ban an account that was simply sharing already public ADS-B data, it's completely legal, my guess is that he had a bunch of other rich friends that were calling for him to remove these accounts. As for journalists, I guess we'll need to wait, early guess is that Twitter has probably found some dirt involving them with old-Twitter board.
  • kevinmchugh 4y ago
    I'm willing to believe him that there was some kind of scary encounter for his driver and son last night. This would match his other stated exception to his free speech platform desire. That being refusing to reinstate Alex Jones, who he, as a father who lost a child, finds personally repugnant. Anything he dislikes, if he filters through the lens of his children, he's willing to ban, apparently.
    • LarryMullins 4y ago
      Could be. Or maybe he cynically uses "think of the children" as an excuse; he certainly wouldn't be the first one.
  • chrisbaker98 4y ago
    I think that ElonJet shouldn't have been banned and that Elon is behaving like a pathetic, petulant child, but if the recent bans bother you more than the fact that Twitter worked with the US security state to suppress a truthful and politically salient story (HB's laptop) in the run-up to an election, then you and I have very different priorities.
• Ajedi32 4y ago
  As one of those people: yeah, this is pretty terrible. I don't think being allowed to share the exact location of individual private jets is nearly as important for the public discourse as some of the other stories Twitter has censored in the past (pre-Elon), but this still represents a significant departure from what Musk was promising before the buyout (that basically anything legal to say would be allowed). I'd much rather he have erred on that side of things. Hopefully this makes more people aware of just how much power social media companies have, and have always had, over the public discourse and that results in the institution of legal and/or technical measures that limit that power across the board. I'm not optimistic though, given how much of the public attention right now seems to be focused on admonishing Elon personally rather than on the overall system that makes this kind of censorship possible.
  • hndamien 4y ago
    What would you think about sharing Prince Harry's live location?
    • SamBam 4y ago
      If the data were gathered from already public information, I wouldn't have a problem with it. How is synthesizing data that's already public (indeed, required by law to be public) a problem? Anyone that actually wanted to use this data to harm Musk would have no trouble simply using the exact same original data.
      • hndamien 4y ago
        Based on the evidence (safety claim by Elon, death of Diana) it appears that promoting and publicising it makes it accessible to a wider audience that does have an effect on real world consequences. I presume this is also why marketing works on a platform that enhances the reach and distribution of a particular piece of information. Anecdotally, I did see the @ElonJet account, and have still never seen the source of the data.
        • 4y ago
• cmh89 4y ago
  The people who cheered Musk for his "pro free speech" attitude don't actually believe or want free speech. They want free speech for themselves and censorship for people they don't like. See the terrorist attacks against Drag Queens.
  • asteroidbelt 4y ago
    Did these "attack" include realtime doxxing? Especially after TOS modified to prohibit it? Or can you give other examples of disparity between free speech rule applications for themselves and people they don't like?
    • cmh89 4y ago
      >Did these "attack" include realtime doxxing? Especially after TOS modified to prohibit it? Posting public information publicly isn't doxxing and until you give up that falsehood, there isn't really anywhere the conversation can go. Of course a free speech "absolutist" like Musk is a complete hypocrite for not allowing doxxing in the first place.
      • asteroidbelt 4y ago
        > Posting public information publicly isn't doxxing Sometimes it is. For example, name plate on the mailbox is publicly available, but posting the address with full name online constitutes doxxing. > a free speech "absolutist" like Musk is a complete hypocrite One guy once said, who never changes his/her opinion, is a moron.
        • cmh89 4y ago
          The mental gymnastics that folks go to excuse Musk's behavior will get ever more absurd. Musk will continue to censor speech he doesn't like arbitrarily and use Twitter to promote right-wing extremists who will then hurt real people in the real world.
          • 4y ago
• emodendroket 4y ago
  I think it should be obvious by this point that in the minds of today's "free speech" advocates, the term means "I get to make political statements and nobody can criticize me for them" and not anything like it was understood in the recent past.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• ErikVandeWater 4y ago
  There are nuances. It's obviously less okay to effectively ban public (edit: and even public health expert) criticism of public health policy than it is to ban sharing the live location of other people.
• somedude895 4y ago
  I knew he'd gone mad when he tweeted the Nancy Pelosi's husband conspiracy theory, but I was cautiously optimistic about Twitter up until ElonJet. Our company had already stopped spending on Twitter ads back when the first (possibly false) reports about increased hatespeech on Twitter came out, where I was one of a few protesting the decision, since it seemed like giving in to the hysteria and just trying not to become the target of activist journalists. But now it's clear even to me that staying on Twitter is a brand safety issue.
  • dillondoyle 4y ago
    The pedo thing didn't do it first?! We don't do ads on twitter (politics). but no brand I know would want to be associated with the crazy-ness and tons of negative press. Maybe good opportunity for click arbitragers and bottom barrel DTC though! low competition! twitter is already showing me taboola level ads lmfao I just can't with hn anymore. came back to specifically read this thread. at least reddit is fun and has shit posting. a significant chunk of active commenters on hn have gone off the deep end. a stew of insane, mean, and flat out wrong comments that have nothing to do with tech or cool nerd stuff. and everything to do with mean-spirited (often right wing) politics
• xracy 4y ago
  _quickly scans comments_ uhhhh, no. Doesn't seem like they're having a reckoning. Will check back with next shoe drop. Edit: I see 2 on this comment. Good for them.