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Comment by nvader | Hacker News Reader

Other commentators are pointing out the potential for future abuse from this policy. I'm interested in how this is targeted against @elonjet, the account dedicated to posting public information available about Elon's flights.

https://mobile.twitter.com/elonjet

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I mean...yes it's quite obvious the whole point of this update was to "allow" Elon to ban that account.

Actually it was the other way around. The Sun King himself typed the three magic letters after banning the account https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603160241352462336 which probably led someone scrambling to update the policy.

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if Russia-Ukraine war OSINT was the main target and @ElonJet just visibly banned before updating the policy as misdirection because personal thin-skinnedness is less newsworthy a motivation.

But, either way, its not good.

Still doesn’t make sense to me. Twitter doesn’t need permission to ban any account. They can just do it. Creating an ad hoc rule about location sharing isn’t going to satisfy the free speech absolutism crowd. So what’s the point?

There new policy in there specifically for that case, so it looks targeted.

> If your account is dedicated to sharing someone’s live location, your account will be automatically suspended.

This would seem to cover everything from the paparazzi at TMZ (no great loss imho) to on-the-ground reporting at a protest or breaking news event. Basically any video or reporting about the doings of any private individual(s) could be grounds for removal of tweets/account bans.

Citizen journalism: all op-eds, no reporting!

ElonJet should just recreate and rebrand as EJetDogPics. In addition to tweeting when his jet moves around, they also send out cute dog pics. That way, their account isn't just 'dedicated' to sharing someones live location.

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