Musk, the Anti-Censorship Crusader, Allegedly Shadowbanned ElonJet Account | Hacker News Reader

Musk, the Anti-Censorship Crusader, Allegedly Shadowbanned ElonJet Account

gizmodo.com

84 pointsnickthegreek79 comments

Back tracked quickly. https://twitter.com/JxckSweeney/status/1602354433807061070

At the top of Reddit is also this post:

https://old.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/zjutsq/elon_musk_go...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdBga225HBk

Which seems to be an account being banned for featuring a video and commentary of Elon being booed on stage with Dave Chapelle.

It's pretty clear at this point that this is a personal hobby horse project that involved spending an absurd amount of money to unban a few people from a private walled garden.

Twitter is a private walled garden. It always was a private walled garden. It always will be. If you want free speech head over to the fediverse or run your own site.

If you're pissed about what Elon did, consider that he has been punished for it already. He paid $44 billion for Twitter.

One of the problems is that there are a ton of people who, in spite of all available evidence, are still willing to pretend in bad faith that Elon is somehow "pro free speech". So I think it's worth bringing this up to remind casual onlookers that it's not actually the case.

>The owner of the @ElonJet Twitter handle says a Twitter employee told him his account was given limited visibility “to a severe degree."

Then you would expect e.g. his likes to go down significantly, right? He would start not showing up in people's feeds and engagement would dwindle to a halt.

From briefly looking through the history to the beginning of November I see no clear trend of reduced engagement. It seems quite consistent. Afterall it is an account about the plane of a billionaire, not exactly the most breathtaking content on the site. I see no evidence that he has "severely" less engagement then before Musk took over.

>Back in January, Sweeney told The New York Times Musk personally reached out to him over DMs asking him to remove the bot in exchange for $5,000. Sweeney counter offered, saying he would consider deactivating the account for $50,000 or even an internship at one of Musk’s companies.

This also seems bizarre. Does Musk really care about $45.000? Is that the kind of money a billionaire wouldn't spend to make some nuisance go away? Seems ridicolous to be honest.

Anybody with a modicum of self-respect wouldn't accept that counter-offer. The $5K offer was a gift, and publicizing a person's flights is sick behavior.

Sick behavior? In what way? It's publicly available information.

"They were so focused on whether they could, that they never stopped to think whether they should"

Putting someone's life in a spotlight without their consent is not much different from being an annoying paparazzi

Paparazzi invade into peoples lives and don’t allow them any sense of normalcy in either public or private. They capture intimate moments, draw focus to people’s bodies, and stir up media frenzies about mundane aspects of being human.

Posting ADS—B data is not anything close to resembling that. Elon Musk claims to have “started” Tesla in the name of sustainability and yet personally is responsible for dumping more carbon in the atmosphere than god knows how much compared to the average person. Pointing out this hypocrisy with publicly available data is not a bad thing, and is nothing like the paparazzi.

> Putting someone's life in a spotlight without their consent

Elon Musk acquired Twitter supposedly in the name of free speech. He then chose to post borderline transphobic thoughts on Twitter because he knew it would stir the pot amongst his ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY MILLION Twitter followers. He then chose to go on stage at the end of Dave Chapelle's set in front of a _lot_ of people, and was booed by a large percentage of said people. When someone decided to post a video of this on Twitter, that persons account was banned.

Does that sound like someone who doesn't want to have their life put in the spotlight? Or does it sound like an attention seeking hypocrite who is using his money and power to try to silence people who question his extremely questionable actions?

There are millions of good hills to die on. I have no idea why one would choose to willingly throw themselves onto a mountainous pyre of bullshit.

The rich and powerful do not need bootlickers to defend their shitty actions.

And I say this as someone who until recently thought he has caught a bit too much flak for some of his immature antics.

Then why did he ask for $50K to stop doing it?

Mostly because he could and because apparently stopping it is worth $50K to him. That the counterparty doesn't agree does not in any way oblige him, nor does it reflect bad on him that he set his price different.

Yea, I'm genuinely curious if the people criticising Musk here are also in favour of doxxing people and then publishing the info online? Cause that's effectively what this is.

I'm not sure where I stand on this but I can see why someone of Musk's public stature would be concerned about this.

Hell, I am a literal nobody and of someone did this or something similar to me I'd be paranoid as all hell.

There is no doxxing. All this information is publicly available to everyone.

Almost all doxxing consists of collecting a bunch of technically public information in one place. We still discourage it.

This isn't collecting data from a bunch of places. Its mirroring data from 1 place to another.

When you're one of the richest people in the world, and you're using your power to influence public opinion, having your already publicly available travel information posted online is not at all equivalent to doxxing.

Jesus.

There are accounts that track Russian diplomats and military brass planes, for example. They turn off transponders if they don't want to be tracked.

But the point is, it poses no safety risk to the rich and powerful. It's just a curious thing for the public at worst. If someone was a mark, the perps are not going to use frigging Twitter and go directly to the public source of this data instead.

>doxxing people and then publishing the info online?

His problem if he uses a means of transportation which, in real time, updates its location. The information is public anyway and it applies to everyone.

I really don't see how this is wrong.

In general, I agree. It surprises me that it's possible to follow Musk's whereabouts in this way, and I'd be uncomfortable if someone did this to me. That said, I think there are some mitigating factors here.

Firstly, the account doesn't track Musk himself, it tracks his private jet. If Musk wanted to, he could avoid the issue completely by chartering planes or just (heaven forbid!) flying in conventional airlines. Musk is explicitly making a convenience-privacy trade-off here.

Secondly, I think we do Musk a disservice by pretending that he is an ordinary person like me or you. He is, depending on your accounting, the world's richest person, which obviously affords him incredible luxury that we should bit begrudge, but it also means that he is one of the most influential people in the world. Bear in mind that he has recently bought one of the biggest media platforms in the world.

The problem with this is a principle of democracy is that power requires scrutiny. That's why we usually have a good idea of where our leaders are at any particular time - this obviously makes their lives difficult, but if we are going to hand power over to our presidents, prime ministers, and chancellors, then we should also demand accountability from them. But for Elon Musk, whose power comes solely from his wealth, there is no clear accountability. We have no right to know his whereabouts, or what he's doing with his money, or who he's being influenced by (and who he's influencing). His power is essentially unchecked (at least in the democratic sense) and limited only by the market.

So from that perspective, it seems very sensible and practically democratic to keep track of such powerful people.

Civilian flights have their data published. If I am flying my plane is publically tracked too.

It's also entirely possible he realized that it would quickly become whack-a-mole.

Someone can trivially spin up a copycat, especially if it's known (or even suspected) that the former account got a payout.

There would also be lots of extra visibility on it if the account disappeared, I'm sure there would be articles worse than this one waxing poetic about how obviously twitter did it to oppose their new overlord musk, and if not, how obviously musk strong-armed the account owner into shutting it down, and if not, how musk using his exorbitant wealth to hide information is egregious.

I'm sure it just became easier to ignore it and mitigate the actual issues it created (if any) in other ways.

>It's also entirely possible he realized that it would quickly become whack-a-mole.

Why offer the 5k then?

Of course it is a stupid idea, the flight data is public anyway. But why would $45k change Musks mind about the matter?

(FWIW, I agree with your conclusion.)

> But why would $45k change Musks mind about the matter?

One reason might be pride. I could conceive of somebody believing that they've offered something that is "fair" and being insulted when their fair offer is rejected (and especially more so when they're also told that the offer was 10% of "fair"). Anyway, to your point, there's lots of reasons Musk would never even consider making the offer in the first place, so it's a rather dubious claim.

Now ask yourself why other alleged shadowbans, pre-Musk, weren't so credulously (or at all) reported on. I guess they weren't "newsworthy".

They were reported on.

The difference is that pre Musk this was a known practice used by Twitter.

But Musk has bought Twitter insisting that he won’t be “censoring”. Yet he is continuing the practices he decried but limiting them to people he personally doesn’t like.

Musk buying twitter is a big improvement because now that it is owned by someone that is an acceptable target, the public is finally learning about what social media companies do as an unintentional byproduct of the media lobbing shots at him.

I think this should also be a good lesson in why we can't rely too much on any one company's service or assume it'll always be there. All it takes is one big change in management and suddenly the whole thing goes to hell or becomes untenable for some reason. I was never a Twitter user myself, but many people who were long-time users are now having to find someplace else to go.

Wow, musk is flying a LOT. Sometimes multiple times in a day. Often across the country and back again. All in a private jet.

That's profoundly wasteful.

He seems to be a member of the everything must be done in person school of thought. He also likely has to have meetings with even more "non-digital-native" people that are even more of that mentality.

> He also likely has to have meetings with even more "non-digital-native" people that are even more of that mentality.

Maybe? A lot of his flights appear to be to places where he owns the factory or company. (Like the giga factory in nevada, or twitter in san fran).

Given recent events, I personally find this strong proof of his mediocrity (and perhaps many people misunderstanding his motives?) Which is to say -- all this says to me is "I'm bad at management" at best and "I'm an over-engineerer, to the point that if I'd done nothing at all, you'd probably get better outcomes" at worst?

I'm not exactly sure what his endgame(s) is/are, or what skills he may actually have to get there -- but it's becoming increasingly clear that the real Elon Musk is not anything remotely close to the image we had of him during the rise of e.g. SpaceX and Tesla et al.

Smart people have been saying this from the very beginning but everyone wanted to drink the koolaid and believe.

My friend first started singing Elon's praise while watching the automated battery replacement "demonstration" vaporware, while at the same time getting suckered in by an MLM.

Hey, the idea of a replaceable battery is a good one. Too bad it was generally uninvented across the board some 10-15 years ago.

I think for it to work, you pretty much need federal regulation to step in and standardize.

I have this video in mind [1]

If we can have EV packs sizes, structural capabilities, voltages, and max currents defined then we can start having swapping services and maybe even better recycling.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=c2J91UG6Fn8

>I think for it to work, you pretty much need federal regulation to step in and standardize.

Which is why it'll never happen.

I mean, never say never, but definitely not likely today.

It's a fairly big deal in China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nio_Inc.#Battery_swapping

Largely non-existent elsewhere, at least for now, tho.

The thing that made me admire him a lot was always SpaceX. I saw Tesla as good for helping push EVs over the hump but beyond that kind of over-hyped. The other Elon companies seem like hobby projects for a billionaire.

The question I have now is: how much has he actually been involved in engineering at SpaceX? How much of a role did he really have there other than as an investor?

I've heard from many that Gwynne Shotwell and Tom Mueller had a highly non-trivial role.

In any case even if he was a mega-super-genius he's clearly losing his mind. It worries me that he has a controlling share of SpaceX. The work they are doing is super important. Maybe Twitter and all this stupid political drama will keep him distracted.

I think his major contribution at SpaceX was a the vision. And that the engineers could work on things knowing that the rocket may blow up in testing, and that was not only OK but also promoted as an example of success by the company CEO. Compare that to the DC-X which, while a 1/4 scale demonstrator, had the project canceled due to a fiery explosion due to a failed landing leg.

Also, I recall reading at the time that he took credit for coming up with the idea to use stainless steel on Starship. Stainless steel would normally not be considered for a rocket due to expense, but with re-usability that argument goes away. And it gets tougher at cryogenic temperatures. Now if he was actually the one that sprung that idea on the engineers and no one else thought of it, that is a question I'd like to see answered. Or did he just approve of the plan when it was brought up among a list of possibilities?

He's on track for self destruction if he doesn't clean up his act. This won't end well, and that's a shame.

I'm not particularly science-minded; but when he talked about how his Boring tunnel deal fixed flooding, this Floridian lost it right then and there.

It's still perfectly understandable if time is of the essence to you, hence you need to jet around quickly in a plane for a 30 minute flight to travel from Fremont to LA (obvious bias here because I fly often between cities).

What's profoundly wasteful is that Musk travels on a full-fledged Gulfstream 650 for such a short distance - and often traveling within hours of each other on that mega jet.

If time is of the essence, you'd just make a Zoom call. This type of corporate air travel is almost entirely status signaling.

Sorry, but there are some functions for which you definitely need to be present. Countless deals are time bound and would not have happened were it not for both parties to be present in the zone.

From anecdotal experience, we work with a number of government agencies and corporate partners for some projects, and it's often much easier to get a yes in person than through a BS Zoom call.

Do people actually care that an incredibly small amount of people that can afford private jets are flying around? How many less dogs would we need on earth to offset the carbon footprint of private jets? What does the pollution look like as a percentage of smog China pumps into the air, or cities in India where they're burning all their trash?

Billionaires flying in planes is such an infinitesimally small issue in the grand scope of pollution that it doesn't even feel worth the brain power to think about. It's like both of your legs were blown off and you're haemorrhaging blood but being concerned about the paper cut on your finger.

The point is that these people shouldn't even exist, every billionaire is a policy failure - there is no ethical route to a billion dollars. So the egregious and outlandish lifestyle of waste and excess while simultaneously reminding us to recycle our cans and unplug idle devices is blatantly insulting.

Are millionaires okay? What’s the cutoff?

Having a million dollars puts you in lower to mid middle class.

There does exist some cutoff and it can be haggled over where exactly it is but it is certainly below a billion.

Having a million dollars puts you in the top 12% of household net worth in the US - while "middle class" is a notoriously loose term in the US, that's upper middle class at least. Median household net worth is around $120k.

Ok, that's for US. What are the numbers for California? That's my reference since I'm here.

There's a big difference between a million and a billion. Here's a handy reference for getting the hang of it.

https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

There isn't a real difference between 999 million and a billion though.

When does a pile of sand become a heap[1]? These questions are ultimately not useful and confuse rather than clarify.

1. Sorites paradox

A billion sounds fine

These incredibly small amounts of people are the people running companies that pump the smog in china or india. Their personal disregard for their impact on the climate is reflected in the way they run their companies.

Beyond that, it does speak to a failure in regulations. The fact that that much CO2 can be emitted without a thought of how it will be reclaimed IS the problem with global warming. The cost of emitting CO2 apparently isn't high enough.

We're just talking about the private jets, not everything the people flying in them do.

You asked if people care, the answer is yes and I gave you the why I care.

You also brought up pets and burning trash in India so I assume the conversation wasn't "just talking about private jets".

How about instead, they quit flying in private jets all over the place, so that I can keep my dog?

Searching around I found aviation accounting for 2.5% of CO2 emissions and private jets accounting for 4% of it.

Meaning they comprise 0.1% of global emissions. Seems non trivial when you consider how few people this includes. At the very least it’s hardly infinitesimally small.

They should have the same restrictions as everybody else has. They can buy their into using tons of waters in drought areas, park wherever they want, blow insane amounts of fuel in their superyachts and much more. It's a small group but they should limit themselves in the same way as the regular guy has to.

The answer is yes since @ElonJet has half a million followers. The amount of violence committed by serial killers is minuscule compared to the total amount of violence in the world, yet people care a lot about serial killers. And yes, flying private jets is comparable to violence.

You bring up a good point about dogs. The carbon footprint of pet dogs these days is incredible, all so people can virtue signal while they walk around outside picking up fresh poop from the animal they keep in a stroller.

Lol, no. CEOs of large companies that need to travel need a jet to do the job. Waiting for some passenger jet is just playing to lose.

Why does elon need to travel? To be present with his employees during a hack-a-thon?

We live in an era where anyone can have a video call with someone on the other side of the planet (I do this regularly with our india team). What large business needs their CEO physically at a location?

You say "video" but it offers nothing over audio-only conference calls, which we've had for decades, and in my experience people and teams mostly turn the video off.

In-person works better. You won't manage factories as good with phone calls and jira tickets.

> You won't manage factories as good with phone calls and jira tickets.

Do you think that the tesla factories won't operate well without elon being physically present at each of them multiple times per week?

Do you think they'll fall apart if he doesn't immediately fly to them in a private jet?

Do you think elon's presence at twitter HQ is making his code slaves work better? harder? faster?

I could see the argument that perhaps during the initial phases of setting up a factory and talking about updates/maintenance it'd be useful to have the CEO present to understand exactly how the layout might need to change. However, unless you think tesla is constantly moving equipment around in their factories (Which, how could that result in better production?) then what value does elon's physical presence actually imbue?

Traveling all the time sucks; they don't do it for fun. So who do you think is in a better position to gauge its usefulness? The CEO whose job is to gather information and make decisions, or you, some guy who talks about software engineers as "code slaves" (did you come up with that yourself?) and is confused about why a rapidly growing automaker that sets up new tents on its property would need to move equipment around in its factories?

Ngmi.

Your argument appears to be "Because elon does this and is successful, it must be necessary". Correct?

How else are you going to ask for naughty massages from a flight attendant in exchange for a horse? I mean, come ON.

I mean this can legitimately be considered a privacy violation, right? It's also probably not correct, I assume that's just his jet moving, they don't tell anyone whether he's in it or not.

> Sweeney, a first-year student at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, says he uses publicly available transponder data from Musk’s private plane to track its location.

I am sympathetic to the idea that there's an overlap between "publicly available" and "privacy violating". Not for the flight data of the richest man in the world's private jet, though.

*second richest.

Why is this post flagged?

This is a privacy and security issue, not a free speech issue. Would you like it if every time you drove somewhere someone tweeted your info on your trip? Thieves would go to your home to rob you while you're away, or someone could arrange a fatal car accident (smash into you) if you're important enough. Or in his case, someone could fly a drone into his plane as it's landing. I mean anything could happen. Why is this an issue of free speech rather than an issue of security and privacy?

> This is a privacy and security issue

This is the same Elon Musk, who has one of the largest audiences in the world, publicly accused Yoel Roth of being a pedophile. Because he left Twitter due to disagreeing with Elons actions.

He also platforms and likes tweets from Libsoftiktok, who have targeted multiple Childs hospitals resulting in bomb threats.

The location of every plane that flies in the US (99.99999999%) is public data. If you want to take your big old metal tube up in the air, then you abide by the rules set forth by the party in charge of the air. We, as a society, have decided that those planes have an ID and if that plane wants to enter the air, then they agree to be tracked. That's the terms of service. There is no privacy violation.

Wow, Musk's getting coverage on HN. Let's check it out...

...oh. OK. Hmmm.

Starting to get a little worried about the neutrality of coverage. It's never good when technical issues and technical projects get polluted with political animosity.

What are you talking about?

So it's wrong to be vocally anti-censorship cause it's so heavily used on HN?

Is it truly hypocritical to not want your location publicly available?

Downvote me into oblivion censorious fools!

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