Twitter's rules and policies now forbid live location information sharing
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It seems if I post a photo of a sports event that makes the stadium location obvious, that would now fall foul of this policy? Likewise a concert, or a politician at a publicly recognisable residence
Purely personally, one of my most memorable times on twitter was the tens of thousands of people watching a British politician fly home on a long haul flight to get fired - quite sad that we won't get to experience the sheer bizarre feeling of that again https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/more-than-20-000-pe...
But I think that’s just the new reality. Moving forward, Twitter is whatever Elon says it is whenever he says it is.
“Shit, someone decided to fully suspend the account and everyone noticed.. people are upset too”
“Let’s unban him really quick while we figure this out”
Only a couple of hours pass and they re-ban the account and suddenly have a new policy.
This is basically the plot of the Ukraine invasion. Pivot, move, take plan C that was made up hastily, and always pretend like it was your goal.
Update: yep, https://twitter.com/ElonJet/status/1603168950489350144
So a simple photo of a busy public street would be banned.
https://theconversation.com/twitter-has-banned-posting-of-im...
"You have 24 hours. You have to write some rules that make my private jet's flights that are public information available on a public website in real time disallowed, while also making Hunter Biden's hacked nudes allowed. Go."
It's happening at the same time that there is an unsupported rumor from unidentified sources claiming that Twitter is talking about doing that. They are not actually doing that now, nor do we know if they are discussing it.
This is how news bifurcates into two sides - rumors are assumed to be facts by people when they support their internalized narratives, then get repeated as fact without context or any of the details.
The moron flies back and forth between three damn airports on one airplane which publicly disclosed its flight plans, what does he think this is going to acheive?
Oh apart from destroying Twitter as a platform for live events, protests, OSINT etc.
It’s not that he does dumb stuff, it’s that systematically acts first and thinks later. Which is not what I would hope for from someone building autonomous cars, rockets, or brain implants.
Ding ding ding.
That's the funny thing. He's got one of the most predictable private jets ever. It goes to the same 3 places 90% of the time.
I wouldn't worry. This policy was made specifically so that Elon could take down the account that posts where his plane is and any reincarnation of that. It won't be enforced on anyone else, unless you're protesting Elon. Or one of his autocrat friends. In which case you should use a different platform anyway.
This is the new trend for him. I expect a lot more doxxings and literal mobs to come from Elon specifically.
But, either way, its not good.
> If your account is dedicated to sharing someone’s live location, your account will be automatically suspended.
Citizen journalism: all op-eds, no reporting!
Yes, it does. Power is what you can do.
> A functional society finds ways to hold unchecked power accountable for pettiness
This doesn't make sense. Unchecked power is not accountable.
The dude is obviously within his rights to ban anything he wants on his private property, but it can’t be the world’s public square if he does so.
Edit: I can see a grey area for "{$speaker,$performer} now taking the stage at {$conference,$music_festival}". Particularly if its somehow a surprise
Edit 2: Imo as written it's not a good policy because there are probably going to be lots of harmless things in technical violation that get ignored, so it turns into a "we'll enforce it if we don't like you or what you're saying" rule
"I'm at City Hall demonstrating. There may or may not be other people because if there were, I haven't asked them if I can share their location or not. Come down and find out in person!"
See also: masking, Streisand effect
People mock Musk
>Ok except you can't impersonate people
People mock Musk with accounts labelled "PARODY"
>Ok you also can't do that
People post 30-sec clips of him being booed
>Ok, no posting videos of shows
People track his private jet
>Ok no location information
(repeat ad nauseum)
--
Honestly anybody who believes any word this guy says is a complete rube at this point. Billionaires have way to much influence and this needs to change in short order
This is bizarrely specific. I have a feeling it's related to current events.
I suspect its either the exact first day of POW videos from Ukraine government accounts related to the Russian invasion, or deliberately chosen to be shortly before that; the targeting is transparently obvious.
And, to be clear, those videos do raise real problems of where exactly the boundaries of the vague prohibition in the 3rd Geneva Convention of 1949 regarding protecting POWs from public curiosity are and ought to be drawn, and it might be reasonable for a social media outlet to adopt a blanket policy prohibiting videos of POWs (either generally, or by government sources, or with some other rule trying in good faith to address human rights.) But the construct of this rule makes it clear that that’s not the issue, that instead its about serving the propaganda interests of one side of a current conflict.
They're conspicuously not doing that.
Can someone provide a citation that doesn't require me to enable Javascript to answer these questions, if they are addressed in the policy?
I spent good money on a Bellingcat workshop and now some of those skills are apparently useless, though to be fair the example we used in class was Jeffrey Epstein's plane, not Elon's IIRC.
(I browse HN via Tor with JS off for "opsec")
Probably can't link to SpaceX either, especially if they're running a crew up to the ISS.
Or the plans/sightings of senators who escape to Cancun.
Or "I met celebrity X on this flight and they were really awesome!" posts.
Or...
edit: seems to be as exploitable as ChatGPT (except from getting banned anyways because of no oversight ;) ) "What is not a violation of this policy?": Gossip, rumours, accusations, and allegations ---- so just preface the flight data info of Elon Musk with "I heard a drunkard say in my tavern that Sir Elon is at 49°21'43''W 38°20'59'N just recently
Or even better, a SpaceX launch.
What's changed: added several references to banning people's location, linking to sites that can show a flight path, or show where a person is.
We define “live” as real-time and/or same-day information where there is potential that the individual could still be at the named location.
They also seem to be banning photos of other people, unless they (Twitter) feel like it?
I am curious what the public reaction would be if there was an API that could give the real time location of anyone by name, groups-of-people by location, IMSI, MSISDN, etc... regardless of the subscribers age. Would there be any push-back?
Some cars also have this information. They are quite literally vessels by standard automotive terminology. Maritime laws require GPS data for all vessels and there are sites that track these vessels today. We could also track the location and speed of all cars and set up an API to query by location, license plate, vin number I think this may have already happened, owner name, owners license number. We could doxx people that are speeding, driving erratically, visiting an ex-lovers home. Insurance companies would certainly love this information. Some people volunteer it to insurance companies already for a discount but why not make it public? The police could see real time location and speed of every vessel with an expired registration.
We could take this even further. Using cell phone and car data we could infer how often people drive their car vs using public transportation. Anyone exceeding a specific ratio of personal vehicle usage could have their personal ESG score modified and limit access to their CBDC bank account to discourage using cars until they ride the bus for a certain number of days per month. We could even confine their car to a specific approved geo-fence.
All of these ideas are encapsulated within /s, obviously.
While homeless in Fresno, I began identifying myself online as "in California" and sometimes as "no longer in San Diego" but I intentionally did not actively advertise the move. A lot of people continued to believe I was in downtown San Diego well after I had left San Diego County entirely and my stress levels began to go down as people mistakenly assumed I was somewhere else.
While homeless, I generally did not tell people where I was camping, either online or offline. I felt this was a safety issue. I didn't want people to know where I was camped.
I am not a fan of Elon Musk, but the HN standard is to take a charitable interpretation of things where possible. The charitable interpretation is that he's socially awkward, overly in the limelight and learned a lesson the hard way about how online information about your whereabouts is potentially very dangerous information and decided to use his experience to inform company policy.
As a footnote, I really, really like the way this was presented, showing the old and new policies side-by-side and highlighting the pertinent changes. Kudos to whomever put this together.
I saw some tweet with him saying (rather stupidly) that he is so committed to free speech that he will not take down @elonjet and it was, of course, mocking the fact that it was now down. His previous position was dumb -- just like I was initially dumb to be sharing so much information about myself online, which brought out the worst in some people.
I wasn't a "bad person" to be oversharing. I was naive. I had lived a very private life and it was really hard for me to figure out how to negotiate a relationship to the public. It was painful.
I imagine that for a lot of things, such a wealthy man gets a lot of deference in face-to-face stuff. That can make it hard to get a good idea of what's real and what's just ass-kissing bullshit and that's not how the world really works.
I wish HN would keep its dignity even if Elon Musk cannot seem to do so. And giving no room for any nuance in the discussion is not it.
The affluenza defense never ceases to get a belly laugh out of me. Thanks for that.
Maybe consider taking her post at face value also?
But maybe people are just monomaniacally obsessed. They need to direct their hatred at some target. They found Elon Musk after moving on from Trump, and they don't care at all about the substance of these matters.
It will be interesting to see how it is enforced though.
That’s a broad claim yeah?
Data to support that claim?
So, yes. I would be OK with it. So long as, like with the flight tracker bots, it's not included with an incitement to violence.
> On April 6, 2007, Emily Gould appeared on an edition of Larry King Live hosted by talk show host Jimmy Kimmel during a panel discussion titled "Paparazzi: Do They Go Too Far?" and was asked about the Gawker Stalker. Kimmel accused the site of potentially assisting real stalkers, adding that Gould and her website could ultimately be responsible for someone's death.
It’s publicly available information to begin with. What exactly is the issue?
Not hard to do. I’m part of everyone and don’t agree so your claim is initially false.
One group who may be against such a measure on philosophical grounds would be so-called “free speech absolutists” who evangelize the value of unfettered speech. Censoring content of any kind should be reprehensible to anyone who claims to belong to such a group.
But if someone was tracking me, I would absolutely want a clear policy to have it taken down. I don't know anyone who would disagree with this.
I think its good though because there is an inherent fascination in people to want to know where people are (like celebrities) and to watch where they go. And a lot of this information could be collected by social media posts if someone really wanted to.
Like an SBF tracker for instance...would be interesting to get a notification when he gets transferred to prison and to the courthouse. But if you happened to be in SBF's situation, you would prefer your privacy.
I think its a big thing. People are looking at it as just one small thing that he does for himself, but the right to privacy of location is a big deal. And mainly because everyone would prefer to be in control of their privacy. And also, posting pictures on social media, or someone seeing you in the street, is public, but shouldn't give someone the right to repost this with live GPS coords. Except if someone is like "I'll be signing books, come down and meet me" which is giving permission, which is allowed by the rules.
Sigh. Privacy is a good thing! But now its politicized, so people for it turn against it.
"you can’t share the following types of private information, without the permission of the person who it belongs to".
Permission is given.
> “elon is at the chapelle show”
This is an interesting one. Should celebrity sightings be allowed. And what is the difference between going on stage, and be attending a show.
> it is not something most people should agree with
I mean personally though - you would right?
The only thing I can see people disagree on is an exception for famous people.
But I don't know anyone who would say: "this policy is bad because I want people to be able to track me...even if I don't give them permission".
A lot of the time in online discussions there is always grey area. You can never be 100% right. Except for the precious few, like this one. And it is even better when the person accuses you of arguing in bad faith, and using an ad-hominem attack, at the same time they are completely wrong.
Click the link in the OP. It's literally a diff of the rule change - which you didn't read. LMAO.
It's ironic how it turns out it is you who is not arguing in good faith. You are but one of many though so don't beat yourself up too much about it.
This is the only sentence that is added:
> live location information, including information shared on Twitter directly or links to 3rd-party URL(s) of travel routes, actual physical location, or other identifying information that would reveal a person’s location, regardless if this information is publicly available;
Would you like someone to share that information about you or not. That's as simple as it is.
> home address or physical location information, including street addresses, GPS coordinates or other identifying information related to locations that are considered private;
You make a good point about the risk of selective enforcement, but there is already a huge amount of rules left open to ambiguity already.
I guess we will see if its used as a tool for censorship.
As expected; by a private platform.