No they didn't. Or if they did they banned it again after their new figleaf rules were enacted. You can't make this up, what a mess.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/12/12/musk-tw...
its just more clear to more remote/casual observers the last two months
I genuinely think he just found it irritating that someone was trying to make him look bad. I don’t blame him, I’d probably feel the same way. But then I haven’t bought a social media platform and loudly and repeatedly proclaimed that I am a free-speech absolutist.
Unless Elon plans to ban the FAA from doing its job, people will know where Elon Musk's airplane is at all times.
Banning a silly Twitter account that copy/pastes data from the FAA won't change a thing.
The paparazzi have been using these things to follow celebrities since forever. It's an exorcise in ignorance to ignore the nature of FAA regulations / airplane tracking.
AFAIK all you need to gather ADS-B information for your own location is Android Phone, $30 USB dongle and some Antena.
It may be more of an exercise of Elon flexing his $44B investment over the heaters and the poor people: by this point he knows that anyone even slightly left of center is not going to love him, so he's full on embracing the far/alt right crowd by "owning the libs". "Free speech" is lip service at max that some people fell for hook, line, and sinker.
Ms. Barbra Streisand, on the white courtesy phone...
He has all rights to ban whoever he wishes since he owns the platform, but common sense should suggest him to stop talking about free speech since he's in no position to lecture anyone on the matter.
I'm sure stuff like antidiscrimination law etc. in several jurisdictions would make such behavior illegal.
Of course it does.
When you make something easier to do, the effect is it increases the chance of people doing it.
If your contact information is listed in a telephone book, it is publicly accessible information. Anyone can look that up. But who's going to do that? (to prank call you for example). But if some posts your info to a twitter account that reaches millions, chances are someone's going to call you. Why? Because popped up in millions of peoples' twitter feeds. And since it's so low effort, one or more people with nothing better to do will call.
so why does he actively mock some people or groups and make them seem unreasonable when they ask for twitter to help with their safety?
do only billionaires get help from twitter now?
People get threatened by random weirdos all the time.
Even if congress shutdown ADS-B receiving or encrypting it somehow, people would just get out the long range camera lenses and take pictures of the tail numbers as the planes land and report it on a web site.
Congress could presumably pass some law but it would have to be ICAO or some other global organization that would formalize the change. Updating the systems on all aircraft would take many years. The current roll-out has been in progress for more than a decade.
As for me liking Elon Musk: I used to. And then somewhere along the line it changed and now I in fact do not like him. But my liking or not liking him has nothing to do with simply holding him accountable, he made some pretty expensive statements and he fails to live by them, even for a very short period. And conveniently just when he's decided to ban that account a stalker of his family pops out of the woodwork. I'm sorry but Musk has lost the benefit of the doubt with me, too many lies over too many years.
This is after very publicly saying he would stand up even to people posting his flight info just last month.
I get being emotional about the kid being stalked but the mixed signals are just frustrating.
Edit: an upthread comment states that the owner of the elonjet account says that the account has not tweeted since Dec. 12th so that the two can't possibly be connected.
Even your comment emphasizes the concept of "public information"
Now, if I'm pseudonymous, that's a different matter: someone would be revealing my real name's association with that pseudonym, which may be a problem.
To each his own.
Explain Libs of Tiktok.
He supported it in theory until he learned that it could affect not just him but his family.
He's done good things with SpaceX and Tesla. He's flawed. Shrug.
Elon has an extensive history of vindictiveness.
He was derisive of Musk, who wanted Tesla engineers to help rescue the trapped children.
Musk responded to this criticism by calling Unsworth a "pedo" and "child rapist" and hiring a private detective to investigate Unsworth. Unsworth ended up suing Musk for defamation.
Flawed is liking pineapple on pizza, not using your platform of millions of followers to call someone a child rapist. That's worthy of contempt to me.
I'm cynical though, I only see lesser evils as all you can wish for in politics and culture. Trusting in politicized public figures = pure disappointment
The most sympathetic scenario re: twitter (ignoring the other Musk issues around FSD/pre-Twitter stuff): a few very public examples of him censoring people for petty reasons VS pre-Musk twitter banning (or silently shadowbanning) many thousands who happened to fall outside the current-thing Overton Window, using equally or worse biased/misguided reasons (ie, 'misinformation') and quietly taking requests from gov/intel agencies... still a net gain over all. But tons of work to be done.
And I think Elon does some really dumb things but in general I want him to succeed on what he is doing.
Either:
1) This is a change to policy, or
2) Twitter didn't enforce the rules evenly to punish people they didn't like, like Elon
It fits pretty well with Musk's "woke" obsession. He should be able to do and say whatever he wants. But if he gets booed in response, then "The woke mind virus is either defeated or nothing else matters". Because the booers couldn't possibly be equal humans using freedom of speech to express their feelings.
At this point if you believe anything Musk claims you are the dullest, most gullible shit I can imagine.
while not sufficient_hype:
controversial_account.suspension = random.randint(0,1)
???
profit()This is amazing.
Sigh.
Might as well ban people posting photos of celebrities at random places, it's way more accurate.
He just needs 3, or 4 or 5, more jets. Each flies off in a different direction.
Obviously it’s still way better situation than quiet censorship for everyone outside the Overton window and via gov request Vs a small very public group of cases for a billionaire’s petty exceptions to the rule, but it’s not helping the cause in the culture war pushing for censorship.
And so far I think the direction he's taking Twitter looks very promising in injecting some diversity into the social media landscape and shaking the government-corporate attacks on speech. Maybe not very much and may be futile in the long run with a meek subservient populace who beg to be ruled, but certainly better than before.
The lesson for others to not be hysterical and look at the bigger picture of the net gain of reducing censorship (and the fact Twitter was already an ideological disaster that can either only get better from here.... or die - win/win) is probably going to hit a brick wall.
They have their own ideological battles to pick. And Elon handed it to them wrapped in a bow. So they might as well take the victory lap.
It's not quite the anything-that-is-not-illegal that Musk was blathering about (although it's possible it could run afoul of stalking laws in some countries/jurisdictions), but it's really nothing compared with the politically motivated and government involved censorship and banning that had been going on there.