Well it seems like Elon is reneging on his previous commitment to free speech.
It's not hypocrisy, it's the natural outgrowth of seeing other people as a collection of vague moving objects that either do things for you or cause problems for you.
So let's just say, citation needed.
/s
I'd go as far as saying "Do not anthropomorphize anybody whose name you know from media"
Do not treat them as people, treat them as ideas or maybe Sport Franchises.
Taylor Swift or Donald Trump or Elon Musk are like say the Cincinnati Reds.
If you are in a bar in Cincinnati and you want to drink without paying your best bet is singing the praise of the Reds, likewise if you are looking for trouble then attack and insult the Reds.
Same thing with Musk, if you are among entrepreneurs then be supportive of Musk , if you are among workers start attacking him vehemently.
Quoting the OP, Celebrities should become the words you spew in order to gain some small advantage while selling your products or when trying to influence people as per the book “How to win friends and influence people “
On the other hand, if we assume that hypocrisy requires intent, then what you've instead described is "just" garden variety narcissistic sociopathy.
Good object versus bad object, very Kleinian and appropriate.
Central to object relations theory is the notion of splitting, which can be described as the mental separation of objects into "good" and "bad" parts and the subsequent repression of the "bad," or anxiety-provoking, aspects (Klein, 1932; 1935).
Infants first experience splitting in their relationship with the primary caregiver: The caregiver is “good” when all the infant’s needs are satisfied and “bad” when they are not.
> It's not hypocrisy
I disagree there though unless one agrees that Musk has no morality. However, in the absence of morals, which is likely, it would still be perceived hypocrisy.
If that is the state of the art then what is the defense that regular people have?
Treat Musk as a moving object as well? Because the Valley seems filled with people singing Musk praises in order to raise money and impress his fanboys who are loaded with money (and get access to some of that money), while they'll openly admit behind close doors that Musk is a fraud.
The other knows there's no way the trench could hold that many and says, "Don't like to me you bastard!"
The first guy says, "Oh, yeah, well how many do you have?"
The other says, "Only ten of us."
The other guy here has:
1. Criticized the first guy for lying.
2. Then lied himself.
Would you call this behavior hypocritical? No, probably not. Because hypocrisy only really exists as a valid criticism within a social sphere that presumes good faith and mutual respect.
But these two dudes are mortal enemies engaged in war. Being hypocritical is the least of the harmful things that guy is willing to do to the other, a list which also includes fun social interactions like stabbing him with a bayonet.
When I see politicians become brazen about contradicting themselves, the conclusion I come to is that they see the people they are making mouth sounds towards as beneath them and a less human Other that they feel no obligation to behave consistently towards.
He trashed talk a journalist immediately after the journalist complained he had to journey thru cold with out heater because his batteries would not last until the next charging point.
He trashed talk the short sellers.
He trashed talk the ones who supported the short sellers.
He trashed talk the ones who might as well be supporting the short sellers, e.g. sec aka shortseller enrichment commission aka security exchange commission.
He is a small guy with a oversized largely sensitive ego.
But most notoriously, he is a terrible public speaker. Like my public speaking teacher would be more ashamed at him than me.
Elon's communication style is also good for forming "parasocial" relationships with his audience which explains how loyal and fervent many of his fans are.
tbh I find the widespread habit of referring to him by his first name like he's a personal acquaintance to be part of this mechanism. This is something tabloid newspapers do with sport and entertainment celebrities to milk money from fans who gravitate toward others who seem to be part of 'the family.' It's a PR strategy designed to exploit human social circuitry and convert it into cash money.
This sounds strangely familiar to someone else that owns a Twitter-like social network.
This is actually one of the bigger problems with discourse and politics today: the idea that "rude, crude, and unconcerned with other people's feelings" has anything to do with honesty—and, conversely, that being sensitive to those feelings and trying to take them into account when speaking is dishonest as opposed to kind.
Legal free speech has only to do with retribution via criminal liability from government organizations, alongside freedom to disassociate from speech and expression that you don't like
Twitter is not a government organization and is also not capable of levying criminal charges against anyone, and is free to disassociate from speech and expression it doesn't like thanks to the 1st amendment. Yes, this is the same capability as anyone else and the same possibility as Twitter operated before, aside from different choices of who its leadership chooses to dis/associate with.
It is an accurate commitment to free speech.
Nah man, jokes are forbidden on HN.
A boy who trades the family cow to a wandering peddler for magic beans is credulous. But a boy who buys the magic beans a 10th time from the the same scamp who is broadly known to also sell sawdust flour and moldy bread is an extra level of foolishness.
Extending Musk the benefit of the doubt required that one willfully ignore his history of deceit. That was (and is) an error. Cf. Rumsfeld and Iraq.
Twitter is a promotion service, just like Facebook (in each, they let users promote themselves in exchange for being targeted for promotion by others). The entire point of it is to promote content. It is not a content platform, except by coincidence.
Once you “maximum derank” somebody, you are denying them access to the whole point of the service.
By all means, ban the users you don’t want. Keep your service free of toxicity. Nobody likes a forum full of trolls. But don’t call it “free speech”
/s
When I mentioned that Elon had already been using his power unilaterally to re-platform personal allies like Babylon Bee and Ye, I got all sorts of pedantry about the difference between suspension and banning, more pedantry about the Ye reactivation happening moments before the deal went through and some justifications about Babylon Bee not having done anything wrong, etc...
I will reiterate here again. Musk will squeeze every bit of perceived power he may have out of Twitter by issuing personal favours like the petty, tin-pot tyrant that he is.
Note that I'm asking for an actual steelmanned argument for why there's no possible defense of Musk here, not why people have high priors to just assume there's no defense.
Step 1 - learn that there are more than two sides to the world. Even in 2D thinking of the flat earth. We live in 3D
1. @elonjet suddenly started to engage in some extremist/TOS-breaking behaviour
2. Elon Musk changed his mind
Given that #2 has happened a few times already, I think that's a pretty reasonable assumption.
"All the houses in this picture? They've already got our solar roof tiles fitted!" (they didn't)
"Everything Hyperloop!"
My issue with Musk isn't that he changes his mind based on new evidence, or even oversells promises of the future. It's the fact he's willing to stand in front of a crowd, look people in the eye and _flat_out_lie_ about what state things are in today.
I can't think of one, can you?
> The people have spoken. > Trump will be reinstated. > Vox Populi, Vox Dei. > 2:53 AM · Nov 20, 2022
Just kidding, he will buy Twitter and turn it into the everything app and it will be awesome.
September 2022 vs October 2022
--------
Elon will fire 75% of Twitter October statement.
Elon will not fire most of Twitter (November). Look, stupid media was tricked by Rahul Ligma.
Elon fires 75% of Twitter (December)
I'm not asking for examples of Musk being wrong about something and correcting himself. I think it's commonly assumed that Musk discovered that this argument would not hold up in court, so he pivoted accordingly.
>Elon will not fire most of Twitter (November). Look, stupid media was tricked by Rahul Ligma.
This is a better example. Could you link a statement to this effect directly?
He literally signed a document in March to buy Twitter, and literally a month later had to be sued to be forced to finish the contract.
How many times does he have to change his mind before you accept this fact?
The number of times he two-faced flip flopped on the Twitter buyout is insane. I've lost count of examples.
Yes, and the intervening event that justifies the narrative flip is that he got increased access to Twitter's internal systems and decided that the company had deeper issues than initially appreciated. Rejecting a purchase where there's a hidden defect is not flip-flopping, the fact that you can't see the obvious weakness of this example is telling.
btw, where's the statement that Elon said that he would not be firing most of Twitter? Again, that seems to be a much better example.... if you can provide it. But maybe you can't?
You are running away from this point. So I'll go focus on this one thank you.
Because you know the Twitter buyout has more waffles and flip flops than you care to defend.
BTW, the contract waived Elons right to research Twitter's books. Suddenly, after signing the contract, he flip flopped on that point too.
This does not make Elon look any better. Elon himself chose to eschew due diligence when he signed the first intent to buy. The first intent to buy was incredibly unusual in the first place because he did not ask for any due-diligence.
If I tell you I will buy your car, no questions asked, and then show up and start complaining about the headlights, that is flip-flopping. It's why the whole thing went to court. Do you really think normal M&A doesn't include due-diligence?
Regardless, the "hidden" issues were a scapegoat. It is far more likely that he wanted to backout because the entire tech sector crashed and 44B was now an insane premium (SNAP, which was worth ~30B at the time is now 15B).
Really? He specifically claimed that the offer was truly unconditional, no matter what sort of fraud or criminality might be occurring within Twitter? That seems very unlikely to me.
Yes. This was a huge deal, I don't know how you missed it. It's also why no one believed he could get out of it. That's why he had to tried sue to cancel the deal instead of just, cancelling the deal? It wasn't even clear that if he managed to prove TWTR had misled investors that could cancel the deal.
[1] https://fortune.com/2022/08/23/twitter-elon-musk-whistleblow...
[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/judge-calls-elon-musk-legal-...
And sealioning's just dull, dull, dull.
Because Elon Musk signed an ironclad contract promising to buy Twitter.
> Also, what was the November statement where Musk said he wouldn't fire most of Twitter? I missed that one.
Look up the Rahul Ligma stuff. He was implying that all the media got it wrong and he wasn't going to fire Twitter employees. To Turns out the media was right. Musk was planning to fire them the whole time and Musk was just doing his usual distraction shenanigans.
Right, but I hope you can see how "a court prevented him from changing his mind about the acquisition" is different than "he changed his mind again and decided to buy Twitter after all".
> Look up the Rahul Ligma stuff.
I did a bit of Googling, but I don't see what you're alluding to (there's a lot of coverage of Twitter drama involving Ligma, apparently). :/
Elon went hard right after TSLA was excluded from ESG Index (which happened under Biden), and Elons net worth is tied into TSLA stock pretty hard. In controlling Twitter, he hopes to essentially sway the public towards a more conservative view in hopes of getting Republicans elected into office, which then will result in economic policies that should drive TSLA stock up.
Follow the rules, people.
Which is it? Because it seems like "I don't like it" is the new justification for bans and "I agree with it" is the new justification for unblocking accounts.
It's difficult to say what said strategy is or may be but it'd be foolish to assume his decisions haven't been considered and vetted. But yes, intent is not well understood at all.
Is there some context to this account's history regarding the Twitter Terms of Service that would legitimately lead you to think this?
Of course I can't. It would be illegal.
Not because of disingenuous "car has a right to privacy" logic but because any judge would conclude that by tracking a car you're tracking the owner of the car and the owner does have a right to privacy.
Similarly, if the name @ElonJet doesn't give out the purpose: the account is tracking Elon by way of tracking his jet.
Morally speaking, the justification for transparency of jet location was to track them in order to increase safety of flying.
It wasn't to enable tracking of rich people.
It's legal but it's a loophole.
And somehow Elon hate completely overshadows the fact that the guy running @ElonJet account is an asshole.
I think you'll find that it has far more to do with directly interfering with another person's property without permission. If you publish someone's coordinates by using publicly accessible traffic cameras or (cost considerations aside) flying your own news helicopter around, the arguments become a lot vaguer. It's not clear that there's a legal/constitutional right to privacy in the US, and indeed recent supreme court decisions about abortion seem to reject the notion; jurisprudence in the 1970s saw an implicit right to privacy in certain constitutional provisions, an idea which 'originalists' regard as BS.
My question here is whether there is actually a rule here and whether that rule will be followed, or was it just done capriciously because Musk didn't like it.
I have my guesses, of course, but I haven't checked if they are true.
Since it was an individual not linked to a website, it's an even easier decision for him.
flightradar24 tracks jets. Go ahead and see if you can figure out where Jeff Bezos or Larry Ellison is from flightrader24. You can't unless you know the jet number they happen to be using.
@ElonJet is effectively tracking Elon and broadcasting that, and only that, information to the whole world.
In theory you could track Elon yourself by correlating public info (figuring out which jets he owns and using flightrader24) but it's orders of magnitude more effort and I don't see how "you can figure it out" justify "publish it to the whole world".
But he isn’t.
This has absolutely no meaning and has no parallels to surveillance of private life.
The police would find that useful, but courts haven't always been favorable: https://www.govtech.com/public-safety/court-south-carolinas-...
But Musk had previously called out specifically this account as one that he would not ban (https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589414958508691456). So, whether or not he has a right to ban it, this represents a reneging on an explicit commitment.
I'm not saying this applies to the ElonJet case, but I can see why the question would be asked.
So what? What is wrong with that? We can't even understand our own motives, let alone attempt to decipher others'. Why not let the action speak for itself? If you're a selfish person prioritizing your own PR above others' needs, your actions will ultimately reflect it, and we can judge them on it. Otherwise, kudos for finding and pursuing something that aligns nicely with your own needs as well as the needs of others.
All the worst cheaters say everyone cheats (which apparently is enough justification to supersede their own public marital vows.)
Arguing that people are universally terrible is a huge signal that the person making the argument is terrible. Don't go into professional partnerships with them, I've seen at least 3 people like that whose behavior has devolved into eventual jail time and they've wrecked their companies.
The world has a surprisingly high percentage of amoral assholes who have a vested interest in pretending everyone is as misanthropic and self-centered as they are, but it's still a small minority.
As an example, take a look at this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33984555
There I basically say that Elon has flipped on a few things, this user has pretended to not be aware of any instance of this (!) and asked for any examples, someone raises a couple and their responses to that is fairly typical of a fanboi. Tbh I should just close the tab and go walk my dog, but it's a pretty interesting discussion and it's -3C outside so I'm sorta procrastinating :)
Or, alternatively, I've waded into a decidedly anti-Musk crowd and my comments simply look pro-Musk in comparison.
>There I basically say that Elon has flipped on a few things, this user has pretended to not be aware of any instance of this
I said that I'm not aware of any examples of Musk reversing course without any plausible justification, and people in reply bombarded me with examples that in my view had plausible justifications, and when I raised this then I was treated as a "fanboi"... of course.
But hey, after some back and forth I think maybe there are some good examples and I can revise my priors! For example, if Musk specifically said that he would not examine Twitter's internals and then changed his mind, that would be a good example of what I'm looking for. Or if Musk said that he would've fire a bunch of people right before he did, that would be another good example. However, I'm not sure if the people who are claiming that Musk did these things are reliable and more sources would be appreciated.
I see that a lot of people gave rude or nonsense answers which is frustrating, but at the point where you are getting examples and coherent responses I think it’s important to take some responsibility and try to support their argument yourself. I typically find one of two outcomes 1) I find compelling information that causes me to change my mind 2) the best argument I can form is weak or nonsense, but at least others can see I’m invested in the conversation and that a detailed reply won’t go to waste.
I don't disagree. I also do not feel that people are required to reply to me if it's not worth the trouble. I'd rather get no replies than bad replies. Unfortunately I didn't find it easy to google something like "Musk said he wouldn't fire people", so I have to try to infer what sort of actual evidence people are using to support this claim (I can see that Musk denied having the specific intent to cut 75% of staff), and yes that can come off as demanding. But the alternative here is that I try to figure out what is underlying whatever bad unsourced claims people are making and... well, my time is valuable too.
Now is the time to provide them.
That lead to a refined claim that Musk said he would not even perform this sort of review and then changed his mind, but without a clear source attached I'm not sure if this is actually what Musk said.
Frankly, as some one who engages in similar lines of questioning as the top level, I think you have to bring your own findings to the table. You aren’t arguing in good faith otherwise.
Mea culpa!
Because the narrative of "Musk changed his mind" that is overwhelmingly popular here implicitly relies on there being no good intervening justification for why Musk would've done this, but afaik this doesn't seem like an incredibly safe assumption.
I mean, I guess you could be asking why someone would care to correct themselves if they have a popular-but-incorrect view on something, and sadly that's not always a bad question.
I'm not saying he is right - he isn't. I just wish people could put their arrogance aside for ONE SECOND, and realize, they would do the same thing.
It's the immature hypocrisy I don't like. That when it was the FBI and DNI having weekly meetings with high level Twitter staff or taking requests from sitting politicians or active campaigns on what political enemies to censor - that was fine because "it's a public company and they could do what they want".
I want emotional and intellectual honesty. It's beyond rare though.
Mental gymnastics gold medalist.
I'm not sure that's the case. I think many people, myself included, assumed Musk's course was always "just do what's best for me." So he's really just holding to that.
You should give people in your life the benefit of the doubt, but large corporations and billionaires usually found success by acting in their own interest so they will just keep on doing that.
I mean, if you have to irrationally hate someone, I guess billionaires are going to be the ones with the resources to handle it, but I'd really rather we as a society move away from this sort of cathartic scapegoating altogether. The more we normalize taking our anger out on some group or another, backed up by flimsy excuses like "x usually found success by acting in their own interest" the more likely it becomes that "x" will be "The Jews" or some other group.
From what I have seen billionaires tend to get more hate because they simply have more negative impact on peoples lives. Elon kicking out Tesla’s founders is hard to judge objectively because they might have done a worse job, but it’s easy to identify lots of dumb shit he did that harmed the company. Presumably he did plenty of positive things, but the negatives are just easier to identify.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/daniel-radcliffe-defends-speaki...
Just like people clearly dislike Bill Cosby because of rape not his status as a former entertainer.
There's a fair share of that as well[0]. But yes, Elon, the worlds richest man (as of earlier this year), draws more ire for his wealth. It's expected since he's about 160x richer than Rowling (she's no longer a billionaire), and uses his money to rig the economy in his favor. He's a more apt symbol of the billionaire class than Rowling.
“As of 2022, J.K. Rowling’s net worth is an estimated £820 million, or around $1.1 billion, per The Sunday Times. According to the site, this makes Rowling the 196th richest person in the U.K. overall.” https://stylecaster.com/jk-rowling-net-worth/
If you look at the top 10 list of richest people Elon is the only one who draws this level of negative attention because he's the only one who is having a huge public meltdown and constantly being in the news for being a garbage human being
The study by YouGov in conjunction with The Economist has found that 30-44-year-olds are most likely to believe this widely debunked conspiracy, with 7% of people from this age group saying that it is "definitely true" and 20% of them saying it is "probably true.
Look, in no way am I saying polls are perfect but almost every metric imaginable says Elon is not the most unpopular billionaire by a long shot. There’s not a huge conspiracy against Musk specifically, people just don’t like power-hungry billionaires.
Nobody cares about Bernard Arnault because he doesn’t really pose an existential threat. High fashion will continue to do the same thing they’ve always done
0 - https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20...
I don't think it suggests that, or at least I certainly didn't mean to communicate as such. I was responding narrowly to the parent's remarks (explicitly rationalizing targeting billionaires as a group) and not trying to imply anything broader.
Not just billionaires, the specific type of billionaire that seeks out fame.
There are plenty of billionaires with names you'd not recognize.
That is some wild logic. People are angry for material reasons. It's often misdirected or invalid but there's a cause.
I think anger is valid and useful when it's directed at the root of the cause. And I'm sorry, but billionaires and politicians are the ones with more power than anyone else so if something is materially broken in our world they probably deserve an outsized portion of that anger.
It takes work to misdirect that anger to other groups, which some politicians and media groups often do. I'd argue that is the thing which should be examined quite carefully.
I wonder, what could be a rational hate?
Personally I also wonder what is the supposed rationality behind any society granting some becoming billionaires. All the more when there is no social enforcement loop that ensure that the gap between richest and poorest remain in decent state. Otherwise the hate of the richest is an obvious outcome of the inequity structure.
Personally, I'm pretty much an "anti-hate" absolutist, but I recognize that a lot of people in this audience aren't, so I'm leaving room for "rational hate" which is maybe something like "this person did something bad, so I hate them" versus "this person belongs to a group, and some people in that group have done bad things, ergo I hate this person" which is the explicit reasoning in the comment that I originally replied to.
> Personally I also wonder what is the supposed rationality behind any society granting some becoming billionaires. All the more when there is no social enforcement loop that ensure that the gap between richest and poorest remain in decent state.
Yeah, I empathize with this.
> Otherwise the hate of the richest is an obvious outcome of the inequity structure.
It may be "an obvious outcome", but it doesn't mean it's rational. It's certainly not a moral outcome.
There are two different point here:
- describing the flow events leading to hate generation
- pretending that that hate can be defined has a rational thing
The former seems completely legitimate to me. The latter seems to me to result only from confusion. Hate is an emotion, which to my mind means that is not rationally grounded. Not everything need to be rationally grounded to be considered legitimate. Rationality itself is not rationally grounded obviously.
> It may be "an obvious outcome", but it doesn't mean it's rational. It's certainly not a moral outcome.
Sure, rationality doesn’t come with moral integrity hardly bounded. I think "rational" is a bit polysemous here, as it is might be heard as "ethically sound", and not purely "logically sound".
premise rejected
You seem to be arguing that only billionaires can rationally hate other billionaires, and anyone who is not on that level can't be rational, because they don't understand what's going on with billionaires. If they they did, they too would be billionaires. This might be narrowly correct in pure business terms, but the problem is that you subordinate everything else to the most unusual characteristic. It's like arguing that the controversial political opinions of a successful athlete aren't subject to debate, because critics haven't won any sportsball championships.
As far as I can tell Musk is currently self-destructing for no apparent reason -- how is that best for him?
Some of the questionable stuff he's been doing for a while has obvious upsides for him. Lying about the capabilities of your products and market manipulation are both obviously nice if you can get away with it. So is demonstratively skirting laws and regulations. Similarly, building a reputation for going after people who did something that contravened your personal interests, even if doing so was their professional or legal duty, has its benefits. It encourages careful consideration of whether dereliction of duty would not be preferable over getting in your way. All these are demonstrations of strength.
But streisanding elonjet just looks weak and pathetic. As does trying to stiff your suppliers.
If you build up a reputation for being completely unprincipled and erratic, and try to wheedle out of both your word and your legal obligations even in cases when you probably can't get away with it and there is not even a particularly compelling reason to try to do so in the first place; well -- surely that can only hurt your brand and also mean that people who would otherwise have done business with you won't or will now only do so on much less favorable terms? Or am I missing something here?
Musk is currently in a bubble where everyone around him is giving him unlimited "attaboys" for his behavior. He probably doesn't have a great read on how poorly things are going for him.
No apparent reason? He bought one of the biggest influence platforms on the planet and roughly simultaneously began heavily pumping the narratives of the MAGA faction, making throwaway declarations of political neutrality.
There's a pretty apparent motivation—advance a particular faction’s political prospects and be visibly seen as a key agent of their success when they fully come to power, and be rewarded for that.
It may be a high risk gamble that could explode before it pays off (its first big chance would be the 2024 election, though it could yield some benefits sooner) but its not completely without apparent purpose.
The "no apparent reason" was not about the what but the how.
Buying one of the biggest influence platforms on the planet makes complete sense, especially if a) it's currently used to advance political ideologies which you can plausibly regard as a real risk to your other business ventures and b) you are a world-class communicator on the platform and that is one of your strongest assets.
So does eliminating (the hostile and plainly incompetent) top management and the majority of the work force.
But in terms of overall execution quality things look a bit like Putin's Ukraine invasion; I'd wager that the majority of erstwhile enthusiastic supporters of the whole thing would probably politely decline front-line participation at this point.
Because Twitter had rules and they enforced those rules which led to bans/suspensions...and people were upset about that on free speech grounds.
So, yes a targeted organized attack wouldn't be overly hard a random chaotic attack is easier with this twitter account.
Georgia's Secretary of State and his family received death threats.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/11/politics/georgia-raffensperge...
Some election workers had to leave their homes because of death threats
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-threats-geor...
But Trump's account was reinstated so I guess only Elon's personal safety matters.
2) I'm simply providing an explanation which Elon Musk has openly been saying, the account was threatening his safety (I made no claim about fairness or anything else)
3) Trump was not doing real-time tracking of specific private individuals and publishing them online
I'm not claiming any banning is justified btw, but I'm providing an insight.
How about this for a better apples to apples comparison? The same guy behind ElonJet also has accounts that track the private jets of Bill Gates, Mark Cuban, Jeff Bezos, and Drake.
There are people out there that literally believe that Bill Gates is trying to depopulate the world through vaccines (going so far as claiming that he was apart of a conspiracy that resulted in COVID). Probably a lot crazies that would do something crazy to him.
And yet this account is not suspended as of right now.
It is now. In fact all of the plane trackers are gone.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the freedom of speech. It is related to breaking the promise (made when joining any company as an employee) not to divulge confidential information. This is a restriction on the freedom of speech that one knowingly agrees to when joining the company.
If I knowingly posted sensitive internal discussions from my employer I would be kicked out. Or worse: if I worked in a hospital and shared some sensitive pictures I might be hit with heavy fines or spend time behind bars. My 2c.
As a random person on the internet why should I have any issues posting some random company's web chats?
I personally think that the narrative you are interrogating is weak, even a straw man version of the people you think you're arguing with. It seems clear to me that Elon has long operated on personal grievance with respect to Twitter, and that "free speech" is just the veneer he puts on because it works.
Yes, that's what steelmanning is. If you don't care to do it, you're free not to respond to a request for a steelmanned arugment. Explaining your principled refusal to steelman doesn't add much to the discussion.
What are you, a free thinker? Why not just joint he "Elon man bad" chorus?
I'm reminded of a quote from a journalist
"Elon Musk fans were bullied in high school, and the bullies were right"
I can say Elon is a shit person because that is my opinion. I am entitled to that opinion as much as you are entitled to simp for him
Free speech is complicated. Saying you'll "do free speech" without refering to implementation or intended resolution to various free speech dilemmas... that means you're probably not going to do free speech.
The part that I find most annoying is when politicians bring it up this way. It seems to be the one issue where nonseriousness meets fake passion most intimately.
You are likely correct! However, I don't think that anyone here believes the @elonjet account was doing either, besides possibly you.
Also, "and you know it" is insulting and rude, and I don't agree with it or appreciate it.
Some people did indeed abuse that knowledge, but it was rare.
A few people were, by request, "ex-directory" and not listed, but again, that was rare.
Most people were not only absolutely fine with their phone number being public info, it was more useful then than a publicly-known email address is now.
Boy, what a complicated and serious question. We should form a committee to discuss exactly where our community places reasonable boundaries and adjudicate blurry edge cases. Who could have predicted that a policy like "if it's legal, it's allowed" would lead to problems? Surely no one with a few dozen billion dollars to set on fire would be that unbelievably stupid.
comment may contain hyperbole, do not consume for statistical purposes
When he's not the object of the speech in question, he seems to think that things like calling people pedophiles is free speech, so he generally seems to be a free speech maximalist and I'm guessing the answer might be yes.
I don't consider a lot of things to be free speech that musk apparently does, but there's a big difference between him being a free speech maximalist in general and just supporting free speech when it's convenient.
Consider the following: The Twitter files contains a lot of private information and outs employees whom have received direct harassment.
The ElonJet account contains publicly available information on a very accessible site. This does not make a statement about Musk nor does it tell who is inside the jet at the time.
Which is closer to doxxing?
He published what they said and the reason for doing it publicly is to ensure the current administration and administrative state (which would be the people at the heart of his accusations) would also have motive to bury the information. I'd also guess that such disclosures also help distance him from any legal action.
Though the fact that you immediately jumped to the government conspiracy angle it seems like you've planted your feet and aren't going to move. It's not doxxing because it's someone you agree with.
Everyone is jumping to the conclusion that he personally did this and it's not in error, which is a leap. It's the same as everyone who blamed Jack personally for bans that were later reversed.
Let's see what the explanation is and whether it gets unbanned.
Don't listen to a word he says - assume it's false until independently verified.
This data is freely emitted annd anyone with a dirt cheap receiver can receive and upload it.
PS. Boo!
Just curious, would you be ok with some guy tracking the location of your kids on a hourly basis?
IMHO Musk has a real opportunity to actually make Twitter great, Twitter was in a horrible shape and no one was happy with its state and I hoped that he can fix it because Musk is a product person. Unfortunately every passing day I'm losing hope. Even if he can fix it as a product, it seems like he will bomb it as a community.
No one ever forgot the calling the diver pedo incident and his handling Twitter can severely damage his image.
There is a reason why people pay Musk thousands of dollars for features that don't exist or cars that are not well build and still don't go after him like people went after Elizabeth Holmes and I'm afraid he might eventually burn out his social credit and be judged promptly for whatever he delivers without a slack.
His supporters are fanatical - none of his previous abhorrent actions have had a heavy toll, so it's unclear why this one should.
He is certainly receiving a large backlash to his recent actions, but I think that's more a case of people (outside of tech) who would've paid little attention to him before being forced to be more fully aware of his existence, than anyone who previously supported him thinking less of him.
Twitter is already a lost cause. He wanted to create a more popular Parler. Probably it'll just end up in the same place with the same niche user base.
At least SpaceX has Gwynn.
This also seems to be reassuring to NASA.
"'I hugged her with a smile on my face, because I know she is running that thing. She’s running SpaceX,' Nelson said."
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/spacex-leader...
-Bans people impersonating him like Kathy Griffin
-Bans people who share internal communications at Twitter
-Bans people who post sensitive information like his address, phone number or private jet location
-Bans a few militant Antifa groups
Is there anything else? Because I’m not seeing the abhorrent part, especially compared to pre-Musk censorship.
Why should I be outraged now? When epidemiologists were censored leading to unvaccinated being banned from society last winter, no one made a fuss about it.
https://reclaimthenet.org/twitter-reverses-censorship-andrew...
One of these things is not like the others, one of these things doesn't belong...
> Bans people who share internal communications at Twitter
Which I expect is covered by an NDA between the leaker and the company blocking the sharing of the leaks. I'd expect the same if someone at, purely for the sake of example, Blizzard started sharing internal content via World of Warcraft public chat.
As in lose my job and be unable to socialize because I need a vaccine passport to enter a restaurant. All based on fraudulent lies that I couldn’t expose because I was censored.
>-Bans a few militant Antifa groups
And this just smells ideologically motivated on your part, frankly
Put another way: the courts have overwhelmingly recognized the rights of "paparazzi": if you're a public figure, there is going to be independent public interest in your life.
The interest can't be intrusive (meaning that it doesn't enable someone to break into your house and take pictures of your underwear drawer), but it does allow citizens to use any public information available to them. Since airplane information is public by necessity, there is no reasonable legal structure that enhances Musk's privacy without compromising well-trodden expression rights.
But even on the public side: yes, this would be entirely appropriate. It's not clear what the alternative would even be; what would it look like to have civilian evidence in e.g. traffic accidents if people weren't allowed to take pictures of others' cars?
2. In such a case you have a need to know that supersedes one's right of privacy. Are you saying you have a need to know where Elon Musk is at all times?
I don't have any particular need (or interest) in knowing where Elon Musk is. I also don't know where he is at all times with the information in this flight tracker: I only know the parts that are already necessarily public.
Law is fundamentally casuistical in nature: there are standards that apply to John Q. Publics (like you and me), and there are other standards that apply to the Barbara Streisands (and Elon Musks) of the world.
I think it's also obvious that this jet tracker doesn't exactly aid in the public discourse, it seems far closer to targeted harassment..
Again, I don't think anything should be banned outside of direct threats (I'm a free speech absolutist). But it does seem clear, even from that tweet by Musk, that that twitter account seemed to impact his personal safety.
So which is it?