He's also posted internal Twitter screenshots, allegedly showing a VP was personally involved in @ElonJet moderation. (In the context of an earlier moderation action -- visibility filtering ("VF")).
- "A screenshot of what he claimed was an internal Slack channel showed Ella Irwin, the person appointed to replace Yoel Roth as Twitter’s new head of trust and safety, asking a “Team” to “please apply heavy VF to @elonjet immediately."
It's unclear if Ella Irwin still works at Twitter, but giving everything going on I strongly suspect there's no one to moderate against Elon personally banning an account he does not like.
My understanding is that the 'Trust and Safety Council' was an international board of external stakeholders and consultants to help with 'Trust and Safety' (moderation) at Twitter, NOT the 'Trust and Safety' division within Twitter.
She just got the role, why would she no longer work there? Presumably she was put there to enable this, after Yoel Roth abruptly left (and was subsequently defamed as a pedo by Elon, what's with the guy and pedophiles).
Musk has previously claimed his use of the word "pedo" comes from South Africa where he says it is/was a common insult when he was growing up, akin to calling someone a "creep" in American English
I'm really worried about how our society is devolving to calling everyone we don't like a pedo. I hate Elon intensely but unless there is any actual evidence of pedo-like tendancies let's leave that alone. And I know that he famously played this game already and is doing so currently with former Twitter employees but lets not stoop to that level if we can avoid it.
The only real "evidence" is that picture of him with Ghislaine Maxwell. He claims it was a photo bomb, party attendees recall the two of them interacting. I think we'll never know the truth there.
Putin is said to speak English although not nearly as well as German. There's not many instances on him speaking English at length aside from some prepared remarks so its hard to judge his exact command.
> Well, the Russians weren't attempting to genocide a country/culture at the point that we contracted with the Russians.
Do you really believe that Russia grown to be the biggest country on Earth by playing nice with natives? Or if it suddenly became evil after revolution? Russia destroyed other cultures every time it got an upper hand and was built on blood of mostly other people.
> Do you really believe that Russia grown to be the biggest country on Earth by playing nice with natives?
No, I think they got to be the biggest country on Earth by having land that would support decent population and econonic activity next to Siberia; Canada got to be #2 by pretty much the same method, with a different stretch of marginally useful Arctic and near-Arctic land.
We have one person's recollection in an interview (his ex-wife). While I'm inclined to believe her, its also no secret Justine doesn't exactly like him very much and isn't generally inclined to say nice things about him to begin with - hardly shocking following a divorce. Proof is a strong word.
I don’t mean to be a antagonistic but as the owner of twitter why would we expect he not have the right and ability to ban anyone he likes? When it was publicly held there was some accountability to the shareholders as part of the public. Now he can literally carry a sink around wherever he wants
Nobody said he didn't have the right to do it. It's his company now.
However he said he wanted twitter to be a free speech platform of some sort, so that's seen as hypocritical.
Moreover, I think that this erratic behavior is going to crater Tesla stock [1]. Regardless of your political leanings, Twitter Elon is showing signs of weakness, distraction, emotional decision making, and an inability to avoid suboptimal choices. In a very public forum, with all of the world watching and media stacked against him.
Elon is looking like he got suckered into buying Twitter and now has to play the difficult and mundane role of private equity turnaround so that he can recoup his -- and his investors' -- funds. It's a huge distraction from his more important businesses.
Folks are already asking him to step down as Tesla CEO [2]. Best to kick a dog while he's down.
I think Tesla has been overvalued for some time. It's not the only EV company in the world, and soon every company (and domestic production capacity worth its salt) will be pumping out EV options for consumers. This Twitter deal was the activation energy required to jostle the Tesla stock out of its lofty position.
I hope I'm wrong, and that things at Twitter begin to stabilize. I think that SpaceX is one of the most important companies in the world right now, and it needs a leader who can continue to push the boundaries of what was thought possible.
[1] I'm thinking of putting my money where my mouth is and buying puts, which is something I rarely do.
As I recall, he was taken to court and was on the path to being forced to adhere to his word in the form of a signed contract. I wouldn't call that being suckered.
We don’t know every detail, and probably never will. If you look at the list of events that happened before he first announced his intentions to buy the company outright, you could intuit that he did not intend to buy the company, and that external elements sweet talked him into it.
> Twitter Elon is showing signs of weakness, distraction, emotional decision making, and an inability to avoid suboptimal choices
Well, c'mon, this has always been the case since the very beginning under both Dorsey and Agrawal. The difference then was that the other half of the world was condemning it.
As a platform Twitter was pretty stable. It didn't have to introduce new features like Official then gold checks to counteract the impulses of its CEO.
Flying by the seat of your pants is probably fun for Elon but it makes the product worse. If the product gets worse, the people leave.
Fair point about the bill not being passed. I should have noticed that.
> Second, if it were passed, intent can be very hard to prove -- even in seemingly clear-cut cases.
It's not at all clear cut in my opinion. This is information that is already in a public database, and it's the location of an airplane - not a person. That's not a technicality, unless the airplane is somehow a primary residence.
It's pretty different than publishing someone's private phone number or the name of the school that their children attend. The latter type of information is actually private.
Jets pollute and use a lot of finite resources. Tracking them is necessary for aviation safety. So making that info more public doesn't strike me as such a violation of privacy.
If Elon is concerned maybe he could just rent a jet as needed instead of keeping one all to himself.
If they were publishing "Elon has flown X miles, used Y fuel and created Z emissions in the past T time" that would be far different than what they do.
You are reaching for excuses that can't possibly apply. Perhaps you should ask why you'd go so far to excuse this doxxing, but not others.
I personally dislike Musk and view him as a conman. I take issue with several things he's done at Twitter and even more with what he's done at companies like Boring Company, Paypal, or Tesla (eg, promising the first car to the actual founder then launching it into space just to spite them).
People here just managed to find a thing where he happens to be right (whether it comes from personal pettiness or actual principle).
It makes him look bad to those who hated him already (many commentators here), but to be frank it doesn't really matter.
The previous bans were controversial because they marginalized a voice. It was never about the specific people in question. It was basically invalidating the voice of many people since these were highly influential people or politicians.
There's a huge difference. I'm not taking a position on those particular people in any way, just saying that most people don't care about ElonJet in the slightest and why catching him on technicality here doesn't matter (in my humble opinion).
I don't particularly care about Musk and I don't use Twitter. I also think the decision to ban a page that makes already-public information about a specific person's jet's location very-much-more-public is pretty easily supportable.
But even so, I find the hypocrisy pretty interesting here. This person bought a company for $44b to improve transparency, specifically said he wasn't going to ban this account to show his commitment to transparency, and then his new company banned the account about a month later. Not only that, but the company didn't ban the related accounts showing the location of others who didn't happen to buy the company out of their commitment to transparency.
Come on, that's interesting no matter what your view on the individual.
Agreed interesting for sure, and definitely hypocritical. I'm just pointing out why it might not matter to those clamoring for freedom of speech in support of Musks takeover.
The thing is, there were two kinds of people clamoring for freedom of speech in support of Musk's takeover: those with genuine concerns, and those who were disingenuous and were mad that Twitter wasn't a safe space for people with certain views. Those in the former camp wanted to restore a balance to Twitter, while those in the latter camp preferred to reshape Twitter in their own political image.
Through his actions, Musk has shown himself to be in the latter camp. Those in the former camp should be just as mad about post-Musk Twitter as they were about pre-Musk Twitter. Problem is I don't see many people (here on HN at least) saying "Wow, I thought Musk would fix Twitter but this is not what I expected when he said he supported free speech!" To me, that shows maybe a lot of people were in the latter camp all along, and are pleased things are working out just as they expected.
I think you're watching this through Musk colored glasses, it's also telling that you call rich powerful white men a marginalised group.
It's also not that he only banned the elonjet account. He banned the accounts of people posting the video that showed him being booed in SF, he banned several left leaning journalist accounts after a campaign from alt right groups [1]. It really just shows the hipocrasy, and many people are taking note.
> The previous bans were controversial because they marginalized a voice. It was never about the specific people in question. It was basically invalidating the voice of many people since these were highly influential people or politicians.
Maybe I misunderstand you, but whose voice are you calling marginalized? Is it not the voice of politicians like e.g. Trump? Is Trump not a white rich and powerful person (I was not specifically talking about Musk).
I think the problem was actually that Twitter under previous leadership was way too lenient with powerful people. Take Trump for example, he was arguably breaking Twitter TOS on a regular basis, but never faced consequences (I'd argue because he was driving engagement so it was not in Twitters interest to ban him). When they finally banned him, it thus seemed arbitrary.
Similarly, how come Musk never got a suspension for his pedo comments, also pretty clearly a TOS violation.
I think therein lies the main problem with most social media platforms, they clearly have different standards for people who are influential enough and the rest of the population and this is by no way a left/right thing.
It's the constituents that voted for those politicians or support those influential people who are marginalized. You know in this case, almost 50% of the country. By silencing politicians especially (in a democracy anyways) you silence the people behind them.
People don't always agree 100% with their politicians. But by banning them you take away their voice entirely.
I said very clearly I was not talking about the actual people behind the accounts themselves. I am not feeling sorry for Trump or for Elon here in any way.
Are you saying that 50% of US is ... marginalized?
How does that even work?
And if 50% share similar political opinion, how is that even possible that this opinion would be somehow inaccessible?
The opinion of people like Trump or Elon is very easy to access, and supported by plenty of people. The majority of them is never banned, because the bans are not targeting an opinion, but rather conspiracy theories and abuses. You can have exactly the same philosophy as Trump, talk and promote this philosophy, and yet never say something that will make you banned.
By publicly removing several democratically elected officials of a representative democracy from a platform commonly used for political communication in an official capacity yes I am in fact saying that those people are marginalized.
But by your logic, it would mean that being elected gives you immunity of doing whatever you want and nobody cannot do anything against that without being accused of "marginalizing". That's a "free out of jail" card that does not make any sense in democracy. In democracy, contrary to dictatorship, elected people don't have special privileges: they are judged and treated the same way other citizen are, especially if avoiding the problem would not have stopped them expressing what they wanted to express.
The reason several people were removed is because they have made really poor choices. For example, Trump could have defended his thesis while still calling for people to not take violent action. It is incorrect to pretend that the bans are stopping politicians of doing politics: you can defend your party or explain your political ideology without breaking twitter's rules. It is incorrect to pretend that the bans are targeting a political side: if you are promoting a political ideology that is not based on hatred and lies, then you never _need_ to post anything inciting to violence or spread misinformation.
If now you are saying that Republicans are more often banned, maybe one reason is that Republicans are more prone to accept hatred or lies as part of their political ideology strategy. But being banned is a strategy consequence, it's the price you pay if you go down this road that is, again, totally a choice (as long as your political ideology is not based on hatred and lies).
>If now you are saying that Republicans are more often banned, maybe one reason is that Republicans are more prone to accept hatred or lies as part of their political ideology strategy. But being banned is a strategy consequence, it's the price you pay if you go down this road that is, again, totally a choice (as long as your political ideology is not based on hatred and lies).
I don't think that aligns with the doc drops from Twitter
I'm not american, so I don't care about republicans or democrats. But I think the doc drops from Twitter is not really telling much. On the contrary, it illustrates that moderation was generating a lot of discussions and even disagreement, which would not have been the case if it was just a matter of "banning the ones we don't like". So, it looks more like when ban occurred, they really were motivated by something more than just "we don't like them".
I'm not american, so, some of the arguments also seem crazy. For example, the fact that the majority of the employees vote democrats does not imply that the majority of the employees are immoral persons who will cheat without scruple. It is very worrying that in US, apparently, people are so polarized and uneducated to democratic concept that if they see someone that happens to be "on the wrong side", they will think they can only be the worst of the monster without even questioning that for one second.
For every bans I've seen, the person banned was ALWAYS doing a mistake, was giving a good excuse to justify the ban when it could have been easily avoided. For example, Trump could have phrased his messages such that he calls for more calm without changing his political message. He did not, he choose to send what he has sent (he had his reasons, but it is not about "freedom of political opinions", because, unless his political ideology is based on hatred and lies, his political opinions are not restricted by avoiding hatred and lies).
This is my main issue with this: if republicans are unfairly targeted, why are they so stupid to always give huge elements that can be used, later, to justify the ban. Just use your brain and don't tweet something that is, objectively, at least borderline. If republicans are victims of the democrats, why are they not even trying to not give them ways of going away with it?
But that's not the first paradox in the US. Another one: Trump claims the election was stolen. He was the president when the election was organized (and was already predicting frauds months before the election days). He claims the steal occurred in states where he almost won, which are states where he has a lot of supporters and allies. And yet, he failed to catch any little proofs. If the election was stolen, then he is super incompetent, and should never be reelected: he has proven he is easily out-smarted by democrats.
It's been interesting to follow this discussing but I find your thesis unconvincing.
"Trump voters" is not a marginalised set, it contains super pacs and Peter Thiel. It may contain subsets that are marginalised but those sets are marginalised by being marginalised, not by being trump voters.
People who have little opportunity for advancement being white and Christian does not mean that whites or Christianity is under threat.
Also, trump got away with his shit for years before being banned. That looks like privilege, not oppression.
I take it you see the irony of being woke about the anti-woke
> People who have little opportunity for advancement being white and Christian does not mean that whites or Christianity is under threat.
As a resident HN Christian, I don't concur.
We've seen a number of Christian individuals & businesses recently taken to court/UCMJ action for refusing to do things that are contrary to their religious (Christian) beliefs, or for openly stating their beliefs [1] , [2] , [3] , [4]
The same protections afforded to observant jews and practicing muslims should also be afforded to Christians.
That does not mean they are marginalized. For every communities, you will find neighbors quarrels, and the examples you show are mainly that (for the ones I was able to access): someone wants X, someone wants Y, hence quarrels.
It would have been more relevant to show examples where the "attacker" did not had any stakes or if it would have been proven that the "attacker" has reacted this way because the person is christian, but would not have reacted if the person was muslim, or atheist, or ... but defended the same actions. For each of your examples, I really doubt there would not have been exactly the same conflict if the person was atheists but had the same strong views.
At the end, it may even feel like Christians are slowly discovering that they are people like others and that there is no reason the society should always settle to their advantage. In a way, it feels like the "threat" in question is "stopping being privileged".
That's the problem with thread discussion. The comment you are answering to is answering to a comment that says that they are marginalized. If you are now reacting to this comment by changing the context, you are the one moving the goalposts.
But in fact, it does not really change my argument: the examples that you are providing does not show anything bad against Christians. What you provide is just examples of neighbors quarrel where one party happens to be Christian. If you think it means Christians are under threat or unfairly treated, it makes me feel that you are thinking that the normal situation is when society always side with Christians all the time, which would be a pretty strong privilege for Christians, and very unfair for non-Christians.
If a Muslim or Jewish person refused to sell you pork, you’d say they shouldn’t work at a deli. Your religion is not under fire. Its adherents sometimes have a persecution complex.
We'll, technically his company is under a consent decree and that makes a lot of what twitter changes including internal processes under the FTCs mandate, so no Elon can't just do what he wants to and expect no legal repercussions.
He certainly has the right to ban anyone. Just like Twitter had the right to do so before he took over. The mismatch is between Elon's rhetoric, which defined this kind of arbitrary moderation as contrary to free speech, and his actions which simply continue the trend but now with a different bias.
That is not true in all jurisdictions and definitely not in Germany. Since twitter offers it’s services to the general public, bans must be non-discriminatory and are open to challenge in court. Twitter can ban anyone who violates their ToS, but not just anyone Elon dislikes.
> That is not true in all jurisdictions and definitely not in Germany. Since twitter offers it’s services to the general public, bans must be non-discriminatory and are open to challenge in court.
Sure. But since ElonJet is run from the US, in a dispute between a US company and a US user, only US law is really relevant, any foreign court is likely to dismiss the claim as outside of their jurisdiction. As far as US-based users go, he basically does have the right to ban anyone, so long as he doesn't start banning people on the basis of a protected characteristic such as race or sex.
Even if we suppose, counterfactually, that ElonJet was run from Germany – while the German legal system might in that situation be open to hearing the case, I doubt ElonJet would win, when you consider the extensive emphasis which German (and EU law) puts on privacy rights, and the fact that it is willing to go a lot further in limiting free speech in the name of privacy than the US legal system is.
It’s not surprising this exists. It’s equivalent to the Hausrecht in the physical world - if you make your place available to the public (a bar, restaurant, supermarket) you no longer can kick out just anyone without cause. You can ban people from entering (or make them leave) for reasons, but those must be non-discriminatory and not arbitrary. “I don’t like you nose/hair/color of your skin” won’t work. “You need to wear shoes or leave.” is likely valid.
This is not, in my mind, an issue of free speech. It is an issue of wealth and power.
The right to free speech entails the right to censorship. I can freely throw someone out of my house for expressing something I dislike. A publisher can refuse to publish someone's work for any reason. If someone expresses an idea others find distasteful, it is their right to boycott that person and anyone associated with them.
My problem is not with the censorship. It is with the money. Our oligarchs are comparable in power to royalty of old, and they act with no oversight and no accountability. Musk was able to waltz in and start dictating terms to millions of people. One man should not have that kind of power.
I will not claim to know where the lines should be drawn. It is clearly OK for someone to run a newsletter about local Yorkshire Terrier breeders with an iron fist, but it is clearly not OK to run a global monopoly of a social media company in the same way. I don't know what happens in the middle ground.
Elon’s criticism of the former twitter is that they went against published policies or enacted them against one group more than another.
Now twitter doesn’t really have policies, just Elon’s whims. And those can change at any time and without any external consensus. No one knows what the rules are.
I don't think anybody didn't expect he would have the right or ability, but doing something like this sets a precedent that may turn many folks off of Twitter and cause folks to cry "Censorship!" which I believe is something Elon touted he would explicitly avoid.
No one said he doesn't have the right to do it. We're just pointing out that he said he was a "free speech absolutist", that he would allow "both sides", and he said in an actual tweet, "I won't ban @elonjet". He is a hypocrite on multiple front, and we're just pointing that out to his fans who have musk colored glasses evidently
No one is questioning his right to ban people. People are pointing it out because it exposed both hour thin skinned he is and what hypocritical BS his “free speech” utterances are.
You're responding to a thread with evidence that a Twitter VP targeted an account that Elon has previously shown interest in. Next you'll tell me that Nixon didn't know anything.
When people make leaps of logic regarding a wide assortment of things, we call it what it is: a conspiracy theory, lacking evidence, and false. Likely later it will turn out to be true, but it isn't yet, so we are obligated to frame it this way to fight the spread of misinformation. This thread is full of people who have a hypocritical stance on this approach to information sharing. I just wish they'd be consistent.
But there is evidence. Even if we are the most generous and say Elon himself did not know about this, do you really believe a VP would take this action if they don't believe it is what their boss wishes? Take the other example I posted further up thread [1], Musk asked Andy Ngo directly "what are the accounts we should look at" and after that a bunch of the accounts get banned. Yes Musk did likely not press the ban button himself, but the evidence is overwhelming that he supports and initiated these actions.
Replace Twitter with any other private company and see what you think.
For example, Valve is a private company that can ban anyone they like from Steam, but we wouldn’t hear this defense if a publisher get banned capriciously and lost their income.
> I know this site will always continue to support Musk
I agree with your other points, but this is missing the mark. There is some degree of editorial control over what “this site” publishes, but none on the comments (you’d had to go quite far to get banned). “This site” is not a homogenous single-minded entity. And you don’t have to dig far to see both stories and comments very critical of Musk. I happen to share that point of view, but that’s besides the point.
The "Twitter Files" also generally fail to make that case for the site's previous ownership. For example, they attempted to show that there was censorship of Hunter Biden discussion, but nearly every example in the thread was just explicit nudes of Hunter Biden being removed because revenge porn is against the rules. They also claimed to show a bias against the account "Libs of TikTok," but the evidence they presented showed that the account was actually given preferential treatment, with a flag on the account to not impose any penalties on the account without first getting the OK from management.
So it's pretty rich to stretch that far to whine about imaginary censorship and then just blatantly censor speech you don't like.
Shadow Banning is alot more narrow than general VF. VF could be used for reasons like maximizing time in the app, encouraging high value activities, etc...
If my reach is being artificially limited without my knowledge it's still shadow banning. It doesn't change anything if the purpose is selling more ads instead of personally disliking me .
The thing is, shadowbanning had a definition. Twitter at one point even defined the term in front of Congress I believe. Shadowbanning is Visibility Filitering, but not all Visibility Filtering is shadowbanning.
Unless everyone can use the same terminology to mean the same thing, these conversations are pointless.
From my read of the “Twitter Files” I hey have multiple levels of ways to reduce a tweets reach. Not allowing a tweet to trend, not show up in Search etc. I believe the “heavy” part refers to how many, and how hard these levers are pulled.
I think it's helpful to emphasize that "Visibility Filtering" and "Shadow Banning" since they are functionally the same thing, but seem to have very different connotations depending on whether the speaker considers the action to be merited. As many on this forum know, one of the oldest and best ways to limit spam or other unwanted user behavior is to hide the content without informing the user, in order to slow down the arms race between bad actors and moderators.
The sloppy definitions allow all sorts of stupid conspiracy theories to be "proven true" when they clearly aren't. Twitter's always limited reach of accounts, that's been in their TOS for 4+ years:
The conspiracy theory that Twitter shadow banned accounts to a level in which even people looking for their Tweets couldn't find them, remains false. Everything that everyone Tweets is visible to everyone who looks at their Timeline. This is explicitly how Musk promised to run the service, "Freedom of speech, not reach" and is basically how Twitter has operated for years with the exception that old Twitter banned people who repeatedly violated the TOS.
No, everyone knew that this system existed for quite some time. The site's UI even surfaces it by hiding some filtered tweets behind a "view more" button. The conspiracy theory is that the feature was used specifically to silence conservatives for their political views, or that huge conservative accounts that showed up everywhere were somehow suffering from it when their latest brain enhancement pill sale didn't go well enough.
Oh really, "everyone knew" ? Apparently not certain journalists, like Matt Binder below, or not even Twitter execs at the time back in 2018 when Trump claimed conservatives were shadow-banned... Classic from the left: "first, ridicule it. Second, strongly challenge it. Finally, pretend this has always been the case and every one knew". Clearly in phase 3 here with yet another fakenews from leftits...
"The practice of shadow banning essentially involves making posts visible only to the person who created them and invisible to their intended audience"
There is a substantial difference between tweets not being promoted by the algorithm and tweets being invisible. A "shadow-banned" user's tweets would be invisible to even their followers.
Time is ordered so that things happen after other things.
So first @ElonJet appeared to be shadow-banned or visibility-filtered.
Then @JxckSweeney commented on that.
Then it appeared that @ElonJet was back to normal.
Then @JxckSweeney commented on that. *THIS* is what you linked to, from Dec 12, two days ago.
Then today, two days later, @ElonJet was suspended.
Then you posted your comment, apparently missing the passage of time from Dec 12 to Dec 14.
Then also today, @JxckSweeney was suspended.
No, that tweet predates the more recent ban tweet by 2 days. I just checked and ElonJet and a couple of the other accounts definitely show as suspended/banned to me.
Seems to me it's perfectly in line with Elon's 'freedom of speech, not reach' comments. Can't say about suspending the account, but as a private company with whatever TOS (I have never read any ToS of any software or service that I use), I suppose this was bound to happen.
I understand this move, but need to point out how hypocritical this is for Mr. Free Speech.
Basically, his entire tenure so far has been "free speech for me and the accounts that were rightfully banned for violating the TOS!" in public, and then "we'll deboost anyone who doesn't pay me a subscription" and "let's selectively release internal comms in a misleading way to make normal company operation in good faith seem like a liberal conspiracy."
What's even more fascinating is how hot-button an issue Free Speech has become.
Just look at some of the inflammatory replies to your comment that just mentions it. There's more going on with the semantics of the phrase being used to irrationally rile people up to outrage, rather than actually being about the definition of free speech.
"Free speech" has become a hot button issue because for the first time in history, oligarchs are in danger of losing the absolute control they have had over media and communication throughout history. What they actually want is to ensure that their propaganda cannot be silenced, while simultaneously still silencing voices they don't like. Calling it free speech is a way to make it seem like their fight is somehow in the interest of the common folk too.
It's all part of the game where they get to tell a story about how they're successful because they are smarter or more deserving or better than the rest of us, while the reality is that they are robbing us blind and making sure that we have no choice but to work for them to make them rich.
Events like the Panama Papers leaks are terrifying to them because is exposes how universally corrupt the rich and powerful are and how badly they are using their wealth to screw us. If that kind of information becomes commonplace then people would realize that our fight isn't between ideological left vs right, it is, and always has been rich vs poor.
> What they actually want is to ensure that their propaganda cannot be silenced, while simultaneously still silencing voices they don't like.
They've been so used to being above the law and above the rules it drives them crazy that they can actually be held to account somewhere. Most of them still get away with far more than the average person would ever be able to (see "Do Not Take Action on User Without Consulting With SIP-PES"), but even that is not enough.
About a decade ago, the extreme far right realized they could rephrase their violence as speech, which meant that removing calls to violence was now "censorship". This subtle semantic shift has happened so thoroughly that "free speech" is now a codeword for "we can drop dox on trans people and get away with it".
Of course, this is absurd, because dropping dox on someone is one of the easiest way to censor them.
Conversely, a lot of actual free speech arguments have been recouched in the language of social justice purely for the sake of not getting confused for the far right. When you hear phrases like "hearing marginalized voices", you don't think of free speech. But it is a free speech argument: due to past acts of violence, a group of people are not allowed to speak, so we should let them speak.
And this isn't the first time this has happened, either. Remember that quote about censorship and the Internet[0]? That itself was propaganda for the hacker movement. The Internet does not actually interpret censorship as damage, nor can it "route" around it. Hackers do that, individually, and at a non-zero cost.
I personally think this particular rhetorical shell game has enabled some of big tech's abuses today. It's difficult to sell alternatives to big tech because that requires making a free speech argument, which means a lot of extra work on agreeing if we're talking about free speech[0], free speech[1], or free speech[2]. Because at a minimum, the Internet is not usable without a minimum level of justifiable censorship: i.e. banning spammers, deleting dox, and shutting down DDoS services. That requires making value judgments about what is speech, what is abuse, and what is violence.
[0] "The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it"
[1] "It's about ethics in gaming journalism"
[2] "Listen and believe", "silence is violence", and so on
It's actually the far left that characterizes speech as violence. Even silence has been called violence by the left. I don't want to defend any actions taken by the far right but I've never heard of anyone successfully defending violence as being a free speech issue. Could you provide some examples?
You misread parent's post. They wrote (emphasis mine):
> extreme far right realized they could rephrase their violence as speech
And in your post that became:
> It's actually the far left that characterizes speech as violence.
"Rephrasing violence as speech" has approximately the meaning of "pretending violence is actually speech"; "characterizing speech as violence" has the meaning of "pretending speech is violence", ie, the exact opposite.
What has really happened is that a major political group has gone from having views basically supporting the mainstream power structure ("conservative") to having views at odds with the mainstream power structure ("reactionary", to use Moldbug's own label). They're shocked that their viewpoints are suddenly being censored by the mainstream media, and chalking it up to a conspiracy by the other political party rather than the mutually interested oligarchic behavior that's been there the whole time. For anyone who came up having their politics at odds with the mainstream power structure, the censorship dynamic of mass media (which now includes social mass media) isn't a shock.
(I suspect there's a similar pan-political shock for the generation that grew up with social media primacy, but before social media had been fully captured by the incumbent power structure)
It's not because of free speech, if you look at every top comment in this thread you will find plenty less than agreeable ones, more than usual for hn in fact. I would argue the same thing happens on every thread related to Musk, Trump and Ye. Perhaps it is a coincidence, or even just inherent consequence of the demographic they target. I believe there might be an easier explanation though, especially if you consider how conservative politicians as of late have been getting a lot of loans and coaching in pr strategy. Some russian oligarchs even publicly made statements of similar nature. After all, what's a little shared botfarm between friends?
Unfortunately, "most people's definition" does not factor in at all when Elon is claiming to only be upholding the law. It is my understanding that "doxxing" is not only largely legal in the U.S., it is in fact common practice for various administrative databases to be published unredacted by default.
Whether the law adequately protects people's privacy is a different conversation (worth having in my opinion!), and so is whether or not public or private non-government entities should step up instead and provide that additional protection.
With steps like this, he just clearly shows that he either never was all that serious about that claim, or that he has quickly learned why content moderation isn't as easy as "upholding the law and nothing but the law", especially in the U.S.
Has Musk ever said that he supports doxxing individuals?
Court cases or unredacted mass data dumps are far different than data dumps targeting very specific individuals -- usually with the intent of enabling direct harm.
free speech absolutism is exactly what Elon was parroting though
and if he were to acknowledge that he has changed his mind it would be okay-ish, but his whole process is to cause maximum amount of cringe, outcry, gossip/scandals, and so on, because this is what resonates with his personality anyway. so far it led him to the top of that particular game .. so it's unlikely he'll change.
Evidently not. I live on the Chesapeake Bay. I see many Coast Guard and Navy vessels regularly that are not broadcasting AIS signals used for the safety of vessels nearby. Yet others do. I also see many military aircraft not broadcasting ADS-B, yet many are.
The vast majority of military ships and aircraft operating domestically have collision avoidance (ADSB/AIS out) turned on. When conducting sensitive operations they can turn it off, but must be in direct communications with the appropriate controlling authority and almost always have a primary radar system active.
The location is for the private aircraft owned by Elon Musk, not Elon Musk himself. He could stuff a dummy on the aircraft and have it flown across the country and the tracking account would not provide any information that is different. This is not doxxing because whether Elon Musk was aboard the aircraft was never implied.
He is also free to travel with other means, he can buy ticket in a commercial airplane, he can drive, take the bus, etc. Non of which are trackable with public data (unless he himself broadcasts the fight number of the commercial airplane he’s taking).
Yeah, I don't think this account deserved to exist either. Really, it was just a bonehead move by Musk to call this account out specifically as one that he wouldn't ban.
Your very own tweet disproves what you're saying: "I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law."
Even back in April he was not saying he was only going to censor illegal speech. Anyways, since Elon acquired twitter he's made it a major talking point to say that twitter is still moderating by the same rules as before: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1588538640401018880
"Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists."
The ElonJet account was violating rules for leaking internal company communications. Is that type of censorship going "far beyond the law?" I don't think so. Internal leaks can damage a company and the company should therefore protect itself. If anything, Twitter could be legally liable to shareholders for failing to do so.
On the other hand, blacklisting Dr. Jay Bhattacharya for saying things about Covid that turned out to be far more correct than what the CDC was saying at the same time is indeed going far beyond the law and also harming all of society: https://www.foxnews.com/media/twitter-files-confirm-stanford...
I thought he was all about the law? And what are these other rules? There's not really any defense of musk here. Leaving up the other "jet tweeters" makes it clear. He's just thin skinned.
Everyone is energized by this situation because it's so obviously blatantly self serving.
The owner of the ElonJet account published those leaked communications, and that account hasn’t been suspended, so there’s some inconsistency there. Zoe Schiffer, who has published many Twitter leaks this month, has not been suspended.
It would be useful if Musk adopted transparency and shared the rationale behind this banning, along with all internal communications regarding it.
This is no longer accurate: all of Jack Sweeney’s accounts have been banned, apparently permanently (despite Musk’s statement that permanent bans are wrong).
Violating our rules against platform manipulation and spam.
You may not use Twitter's services in a manner intended to artificially amplify or suppress information or engage in behavior that manipulates or disrupts people's experience on Twitter.
“Artificially amplify” probably covers it, since he wrote code to amplify information that was otherwise tricky to view. Interesting precedent, though.
Here’s another update (yes, I know nobody’s reading this far nested):
The rules and policies covering personal information have been changed to include “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.”
I have confirmed via the Wayback Machine that this change occurred within the last 48 hours.
I am going to be non-neutral now: what a dumb policy. That means you could report someone for posting a photo of a sporting event, because it identifies the location of the players. I’m not even totally against the concept but that is a terrible, terrible implementation.
Remember how the people deciding whether or not to ban Trump were relying on nuances and intent rather than trying to write iron-clad rules? This is why.
Musk claims an attempt was made to assault him: "Last night, car carrying lil X in LA was followed by crazy stalker (thinking it was me), who later blocked car from moving & climbed onto hood.
Legal action is being taken against Sweeney & organizations who supported harm to my family."
>On the other hand, blacklisting Dr. Jay Bhattacharya for saying things about Covid that turned out to be far more correct than what the CDC was saying at the same time is indeed going far beyond the law and also harming all of society: https://www.foxnews.com/media/twitter-files-confirm-stanford...
This is textbook whataboutism, using Fox News no less. It's irrelevant to the discussion about Musk's hypocrisy on free speech, which you also ignored in your previous comment:
Who is "you people"? And how is it not relevant when it is the verbatim-repeated left-wing talking point to say that the Twitter files are a "nothing burger"?
You know you are losing an argument when you call the literal facts (tweets) saying you wouldn't do something that you did a nothing burger. Musk can do whatever he wants, and we can all make fun of him for being so obviously self serving and foolish.
I don't lose arguments very often, and I'm certainly not losing this one. Circumstances change, and the accounts were suspended for violating a different rule. You can post what you want, and we can all make fun of you for being wrong.
Yeah I agree that Elon is full of shit, but there's a little lie in here that needs to be addressed:
> normal company operation in good faith
But it wasn't "normal company operation" because they completely disregarded preexisting company policy for dealing with political figures. Here are political figures that they didn't ban (who were inciting violence)
> 20. In June 2018, Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei tweeted, “#Israel is a malignant cancerous tumor in the West Asian region that has to be removed and eradicated: it is possible and it will happen.”
> 21. In October 2020, the former Malaysian Prime Minister said it was “a right” for Muslims to “kill millions of French people.”
But they banned the former president. What they were doing wasn't "normal company operation", it was a bunch of power tripping people in upper management (like Roth) who "took it upon themselves" to disregard preexisting company policies for some odd reason
You can dislike Trump/Elon/et al, but the "normal company operation" bit is an outright distortion of what actually happened
> Public figures were largely exempt from the rules except when their tweet was egregious.
So are you saying that the two tweets I posted above aren't egregious?
> Not sure why you think this is some conspiracy when it was blatantly obvious.
I can't find that allegation anywhere in my comment. What was there was the obvious inconsistency between not banning e.g. the Ayatollah for the above comment, but banning the former president
Can you find any tweets from the former president that were even comparable to the two tweets I posted?
They gave people multiple chances. When you encourage violence, spread medical advice where it's against actual medical advice, when it hurts people and you are no doctor either, when you send people out to attack others, encourage deadly violence, then after a few chances it seems reasonable to ban them. I wonder if musk will release what must have been a huge amount of worrying about much anger this would cause right wingers. This supposed scandalous impact of these selected disclosures won't have much impact because it's not that surprising that there was a limit. Also it's a private company, they can make any decisions about letting people use their system that they want to. Do you think Fox News has been tortured about how much of trumps shenanigans they should put on the front page of their website? They clearly reduce coverage of trump's foolishness, support for racists, etc. It's not a crime to do this, they are a free private company.
This isn't about "right wingers" or any of these braindead arguments about "moderation being in the public interest", my point was that saying what Roth and others did was "normal company operation" is an outright lie and anyone who's actually paying attention knows this
> Trump was banned for inciting an insurrection which is illegal.
So we should ban everyone who's suspected of doing something illegal then? They don't even have to be charged with any crimes, we just have to be convinced that they did something illegal in order to have grounds for banning them
It was pretty far past suspected. If I was a person of influence and I was sending mobs to break into govt buildings I would have been arrested, especially if it went on for months leading up to it and I said I love what you are doing, you are beautiful. We've tried to keep presidents out of actual criminal implications, we probably made a big mistake as a country when ford pardoned nixon. I do doubt trump's attempt to overturn the election, encourage sedition etc will lead to him facing actual criminal sanctions.
Multiple countries have passed laws forcing social media companies to remove content seen as inciting violence. They don't have a choice but to remove that sort of content.
Is there any public information about how twitter handled the two examples you provided at the end there? Do we know for sure they actively chose not to take any actions?
If not, I'm not sure it is fair to claim they completely ignored them. They may have limited their reach via some kind of shadow banning. Action like that is harder to notice than an account ban.
Also, since your examples predate the particular ban we are discussing, do we know for sure there weren't policy changes in between. Perhaps even because of examples like the ones you list.
Personally, I wonder if Twitter might have a more American-centric view of the world and a higher sense of urgency for "events at home", so to speak. That could go some way to explaining what seems to be selective enforcement of their terms of service.
Have you considered that many people here actually work in companies and know how they work, meaning they don't need a media source to know that the Twitter files are bogus? In fact, most people here have brains and can think for themselves, and we actually don't rely on a media outlet for all our takes.
Have you also considered that there is a huge difference between Khamenei and PMs saber rattling online against other countries (which was actually consistent with Twitter's then current policy of treating world leaders, Trump included, with a lenient hand) vs. a president not condemning and (very likely encouraging) an attempt by his own supporters seeking to overturn an election as said attempt was going on?
> a president not condemning and (very likely encouraging)
So not condemning something (that is to say, choosing not to speak) and "very likely encouraging" (as opposed to actually encouraging) is somehow worse than calling for outright genocide?
Your comment isn't really clear here. Are denying that the two comments I posted aren't contributing to violence that was actively going on at the time of their posting?
And with regard to this:
> Have you considered that many people here actually work in companies and know how they work, meaning they don't need a media source to know that the Twitter files are bogus? In fact, most people here have brains and can think for themselves, and we actually don't rely on a media outlet for all our takes.
The larger problem isn't the lack of uniform enforcement. Our actual problem was trusting Twitter to remain impartial in the first place. It's crazy how many people bought into the "global town hall" bullshit Elon Musk pedaled, and now it's unsurprising to watch him backpedal now that the reigns are in his hands.
Hopefully people realize that trusting $COMPANY will never deliver you anything good. We either regulate the things we care about, or let stuff like this happen. Either way, the world keeps spinning.
> Hopefully people realize that trusting $COMPANY will never deliver you anything good. We either regulate the things we care about, or let stuff like this happen. Either way, the world keeps spinning.
Or an alternative: people can use social media that doesn't suck whenever something like this happens, and the market forces will punish the stupidity on twitter or any other platform that forgets what's owed to its userbase
I have no idea why your first instinct is to regulate when twitter doesn't have a monopoly and there are several very similar alternatives that are growing in popularity
This is why we need regulation surrounding these things.
It's a balancing act between individual and social rights (individual in this case being twitter), but these companies very explicitly build to scale to be a sort of "town hall" and in doing so start having very large social influence the likes of which no one in history has ever had.
When they get to this scale there has to be extra responsibility here for the good of society as a whole.
> but these companies very explicitly build to scale to be a sort of "town hall" and in doing so start having very large social influence the likes of which no one in history has ever had.
I think a bazaar or carnival is a better metaphor, since a town hall is a brick and mortar thing that lasts into posterity, whereas a social network is more temporary
> When they get to this scale there has to be extra responsibility here for the good of society as a whole.
Or people could just not use the service and move onto a different one? There's nothing permanent about the current social networks that are popular right now
You don't live in a town, though. You live in a privately owned-and-operated digital Olive Garden, which Elon Musk bought and made Confederate Flags mandatory or whatever. The town already decided that's okay a few hundred years ago, and reversing that stance would require pushing out all the restaurants people know and love.
Twitter is not analogous with a town, though. That's the thesis of my original comment, and I'm using your metaphor to explain how Twitter is not a public asset.
You've gotten lost in the weeds, my original comment said town hall (or town square if you prefer), and twitter IS analogous to a town hall where people gather to speak to audiences.
Town got pulled in when I pointed out that rights over speech wrt to these places still exist even though someone can move to a different town (to presumably gain access to a different town hall).
Well, yes and no. Yes, we need regulation if we want to hold people accountable for what they say online. No, in the sense that discriminating between large and small services is a bad idea. Scale has nothing to do with it, smaller services don't deserve to get off scott-free just because they didn't hit 'Twitter-scale' yet.
Again, the biggest issue here is the public misconception that Twitter (or any of the internet) is a benevolent platform. Legislation cannot change that.
Small platforms need to be held to a different standard. If you are the global village square platform worth 44 billion you get different rules compared to a wordpress blog with no traffic where you can make comments. Scale matters.
That's a tautology, my original comment was pointing out that the law needs to be updated. Pointing out that the current law isn't like that is not interesting.
This is an idiosyncratic understanding of "rule of law." Laws in America routinely discriminate between small and large entities. For example, the FMLA only applies to companies with 50 or more employees.
So we have a company headquartered in SF, and I think something like 98% of twitter's political donations went to democrats, and the employees acted as constant activists whenever the executives didn't take action against high level conservatives (I'll leave aside whether that action was justified or not).
Also, if you read the twitter files, the enforcement was fairly lopsided. Look what happened to @libsoftiktok -- constant labels and suspensions even though they admitted that they couldn't actually find rule breaks. They just didn't like the "intent". And when that account got doxxed -- which is dangerous and malicious -- the company did nothing.
I don't think you need to call it a liberal conspiracy, it's just very clear that twitter has/had a very particular bias based on the facts alone.
The reason it's unimportant is that these same activist employees never bothered to protest other heads of state/terrible people in other countries doing worse things. It was very specifically about US politics and guys they personally disliked, not the application of a fair policy.
Yes shockingly people are more concerned about what's going on in the place they live in than another country on the other side of the world. How many people who work at Twitter could even name the former PM of Malaysia that you mention?
It's not shocking at all, my only point is that twitter has a very specific political bent and their actions obviously reflect this. Why is this controversial at all?
It becomes a problem if you do not apply the letter of the law universally.
If you turn a blind eye to the behaviour of someone you agree with, even if they're doing something that is against the rules (or the spirit of the rules) but you come down hard on someone else for actions that are the same (or lesser); then it's a problem for me.
If you're suggesting I'm angry, I'm not, I'm just pointing out something that I think should be fairly obvious: twitter has a very specific political bent and their actions reflect that.
Was there much interesting in there? I mostly remember it opening with the Dems having a direct line for reporting, with the examples shown of it being used being mostly nudes of Hunter&company, that i assume won't surprise anyone when being acted upon. Now there shouldn't be direct lines, but a fair report&enforcement system instead. But i somehow doubt that will get any better under musk...
You're going to mislead a lot of non-Americans here with the bit about political donations. In America, you can donate to one party to benefit the other party by virtue of candidate selection during primary elections. Who one donates to does not necessarily match their preferred party.
Yes that happens, but how common is it really? I've never heard of anyone actually doing that.
It's becoming more common. I wouldn't say it's fully "common" yet.
I think the most public example was the recent gubernatorial election in Illinois. Incumbent Governor Pritzker donated money to a very far-right candidate, Darrin Baley, so that he would get the Republican nomination, and push moderate voters toward Pritzker in the general election.
It was all very well documented in Illinois newspapers during the election, and the New York Times did at least one piece about it, too.
The Times also noted that after the election, Biden gave a speech where he made a statement that this was not an acceptable practice. He didn't call out Pritzker by name, but if you were following the Illinois election, you know who he was talking about.
I know quite a few donors, though none major. But why the "major" qualifier? The conversation context here seems to be normal employees, not major donors, so I would challenge that knowledge must be of "major" donors to be relevant. We're talking about "98%" of employees, not just a few high ranking execs that donate to both parties (which, btw, absolutely is common).
> The original comment is referencing Twitter having donated to Democrats.
This is the crux of our disagreement. You are considering "Twitter" as a singular entity making donations, while I consider employees of Twitter as individual entities, 98% of whom donated to Democrats. I believe the latter is the context, while you do not. If you're correct on the context, then I would agree. As I mentioned before, it's very common for organizations/big business to donate to both parties.
I would direct you to the grandparent where the context was set:
> So we have a company headquartered in SF, and I think something like 98% of twitter's political donations went to democrats, and the employees acted as constant activists whenever the executives didn't take action against high level conservatives (I'll leave aside whether that action was justified or not).
> I think something like 98% of twitter's political donations went to democrats
That reads to me as 'Twitter the organization', not 'Twitter the people in the organization'. I suppose it could be either, but I have never heard that kind of wording for a company as its constituent employees instead of as a monolith. I am open to a different interpretation if you can guide me through it and it seems plausible to me, but if there is no reconciling the disparate readings then I suppose we shall have to admit to an impasse.
I think it’s worth digging into that LibsOfTikTok issue, because even the limited information we’ve got is being misinterpreted. It is a real shame that Elon decided to do a selective release.
The text shared was this:
=====
Site Policy Recommendation
Site Policy recommends placing @LibsOfTiktok ([LTT] 1.3M followers, not verified) in a 7-day timeout at the account level meaning, not for a specific Tweet] based on the account's continued pattern of indirectly violating Twitter's Hateful Conduct Policy by tweeting content that either leads to or intends to incite harassment against individuals and institutions that support LGBTQ communities. At this time, Site Policy has not found explicitly violative Tweets,
which would result in a permanent suspension of the account. This type of enforcement action [repeated 7-day timeouts at the account-level] will not lead to permanent suspension, however: should LTT engage in any other direct Tweet-level violations
of any of Site Policy's policies, we will move forward with permanent suspension.
Assessment
Since its most recent timeout, while LTT has not directly engaged in behavior violative of the Hateful Conduct policy, the user has continued targeting individuals/allies/supporters of the LGBTQIA+ community for alleged misconduct. The targeting of at least one of these institutions
=====
It’s inaccurate to say that LoTT didn’t violate the rules. LoTT didn’t directly violate the rules. Weiss chose to cut the text off before getting to the description of what happened as a result of LoTT’s tweets.
So at this point you can ask a more nuanced question: what do you do about indirect violations which you believe in good faith have potentially harmful results? Such as, say, bomb threats?
I’m not going to try and answer that here because it’s a really difficult question and I don’t think we’d reach an answer. I will say that I think it’s important to acknowledge that the question itself is reasonable. The Twitter Files fail to acknowledge that.
I will also note that Weiss selectively quoted the text in her screenshot. “Since its most recent timeout, while LTT has not directly engaged in behavior violative of the Hateful Conduct policy…” became “LTT has not directly engaged in behavior violative of the Hateful Conduct policy.” That changes the meaning of the sentence and obscures the question I raised above. I would also like to know if Twitter determined that LoTT directly engaged in such behavior before the most recent timeout; it seems very relevant.
Finally, we have no idea how lopsided the enforcement was because we don’t have the complete dataset. Showing us a handful of cases selected by unclear means is hardly enough data to form conclusions!
This is going to sound specious, but I honestly never stress about downvotes. It tends to even out to the overall tenor of the forum, whether that’s here or Reddit. If I’m always getting downvoted it’s a sign that I’m out of tune with the forum and I should think about whether or not I should hang around.
No, that’s fair enough. I’ve tried to take on a similar attitude. Thankfully the community has made me feel a bit better about what it tends to upvote lately. For a while there I was questioning my place here.
You should look carefully at what Bari Weiss misquotes. Twitter's statement is about Libsoftiktok not doing something suspendable was limited to a short time period, not a blanket statement.
But "they got suspended 6 times for legitimate reasons and then the continued to behave badly while staying just inside the written bounds of the rules" isn't really a story.
I've yet to hear a legitimate reason. As far as I can tell, they just angered liberals by reposting their own (ridiculous) content. I'm liberal and even I think that's funny!
Perhaps you should take in information from sources more diverse than Weiss and Taibbi.
Like the Wikipedia page does a good job of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libs_of_TikTok#:~:text=terro.... Summarizing the suspensions, which were for misgendering and harassing trans people, primarily. That's the majority of what LTT produces, banal anti-trans propaganda. If you think that's funny, well, that's on you.
Ah yes, the idea that remaining objective is biased, and that instead one must simply uncritically reiterate what both sides say, with no regard for independent verification.
No. Calling family friendly events where people read to kids "grooming" isn't documenting "nonsense that some activists spout". It involves neither nonsense, nor trans activists.
She was instigating acts of extreme violence. Surely you’re joking. Or tell us how you really feel about certain extremely vulnerable & marginalized members of our society more, I guess.
No, I’m not going to take the 10 seconds of time in which the search engine of your choice will suffice for this.
If you’re trying to insinuate the Charles Manson defense, which has been a common theme regarding one side of the political spectrums views on LibsofTikTok, I do not particularly wish to engage in any further discussion.
I follow that account and have never seen any instigation of any violence of any kind. More likely, a certain "side of the political spectrum" has decided that redefining language is a good idea, and making anything they disagree with "violence" seems to be a defining characteristic of that group. You added "extreme violence" to double down on it, but faking outrage doesn't help the discussion any.
Twitter (in my experience, everyone seems to have a different one) was very left-leaning..
Not the kind of left that the rest of the world see's as left, but that weird US-coastal left leaning that sometimes depicts some races as inhuman and other races as infantalised.
So believe me when I say: What Elon is doing is not better, it's more of the same, but towards the right wing and his interests.
The answer to bias is not bias in another direction, the answer is neutrality, and he has proven he can't be neutral.
If stochastic terrorism is speech that makes violent acts against an individual or group more likely, isn't ElonJet engaging in stochastic terrorism by making it easier for a radicalized crazy person to find Elon and harm him in real life?
I personally think the concept of stochastic terrorism is a rhetorical trick to associate legal speech with terrorism, but I think the argument applies just as well to ElonJet.
This would be a believable argument iff Elon had to deal with legitimated threats on his life in direct connection to ElonJet's operation. Since there's no evidence to back this up, it's a false equivalence.
Sorry, but I only see cars in this clip. I'm not sure how jet tracking relates so you're going to have to explain that part to me. Until then I'm going to continue to justifiably assert that the two are unrelated.
This is an interesting term that is worth exploring. A problem with it is that it could apply to huge swaths of people and organizations, e.g. Fox News, the Republican Party, CNN, Democratic Socialists, etc
Every time I read one of these threads I wonder if I'm somehow seeing different screenshots that what the author is talking about, because they're always full of some of the most uncharitable interpretations possible. The tweet linked reads like a biased summary of a biased summary.
I don't know people expect moderation to work, but it's inherently messy and imperfect because humans are messy and imperfect, and past a certain point you always end up having to trust the instincts and judgement of moderators.
As someone who has moderated large group before, my main reaction is "this stuff is surprising to people?"
The bias and hand wringing about censoring people whom they even admitted hadn't actually broken any rules disclosed in by Taibbi and Weiss deserved no charity. It was worse than people had imagined.
And you're just going to ignore this part?
>2) Twitter's censorship was almost 100% aligned with the Dem Party.
That's not "moderation". That's "partisan censorship".
I think a reasonable policy would be you can't post the location of people against their will. Seems like a big security concern. Just because its publicly accessible by some means doesn't mean its okay to blast out.
If you agree its fine, would you apply the same reasoning to [favorite politician]? How about a bot that crowdsources the whereabouts of [politician] at any time?
Note that the account wasn't about the location of a specific person, but rather the (public) location of a specific aircraft (own/used by a specific person). It's not like someone was tailing Elon and reporting their every location - planes must broadcast their location through use of ADS-B. It is public information.
> If you agree its fine, would you apply the same reasoning to [favorite politician]?
Note also that FlightRadar24 and other ADS-B vendors are required by law to comply with FAA LADD, so airplane operators can request (demand, really) their information be scrubbed.
> Note also that FlightRadar24 and other ADS-B vendors are required by law to comply with FAA LADD
Flight tracking vendors that use FAA data are required by law to comply with LADD. Ones that run their own ADS-B networks and use no FAA data (e.g. ADSBexchange.com) are not.
Do you own a home? Would you like a social network that allows someone that doesn't like you to post your home address to millions of followers? Are sites like acris a security concern?
>Would you like a social network that allows someone that doesn't like you to post your home address to millions of followers?
That's public data in my county whether I like it or not. Presumably that's where most of my junk mail comes from. It's annoying but I don't think it should be banned necessarily
You don't get my point. Re-read my comment. Yes, sites exist that aggregate some public data. They are not necessarily a security risk. But blasting out data that may be public somewhere to millions of people who hate you is a security risk.
Another example of something like this is the mugshot websites that post your mugshot (also public!) and spam in out in hopes of getting you to bribe them to take it down.
Don't the people who actually want to harm musk, and have the means to make it happen, have anyway the means to get the information they need to find him? If it's mildly obnoxious like having to look up land records, they'll just do that.
I genuinely don't see how posting the location of his plane is a "security risk." I don't understand why he gets this added layer of consideration as a person in the airport. They got security at the airport. He lands behind it, same as anyone. He comes through it and his security is in his hands and the hands of the local cops, same as anyone. What's the deal here?
It’s a private jet, so he actually doesn’t have to deal with security at all and in most cases he won’t be close to the main terminal.
I think, to be completely fair, that the perceived security issue is more that we have a loose idea of what city he might be in. This feels more like a privacy issue than a serious security issue.
I think by virtue of of being a public figure, Elon can't have the same expectations of privacy as regular people enjoy by way of relative anonymity. No one really balks at the Pelosi's home being easily obtainable information.
If "against their will" means "without their consent", one might never again be able to post a picture taken in a public place where faces were identifiable in the background.
Ordinary photographs constitute ample and often accidental documentation of where people were at any given time. Even if you assume consent (which is a real unfair assumption where people don't even know about posts being made about them), this would suppress a lot of information that is very clearly in the public interest; if I can get posts taken down that document I was doing a bad thing in a particular place, I have a lot of power to suppress evidence of my malfeasance.
The US's legal framework here makes a lot of compromises that make a lot of people unhappy, but if you dig into it, you can see why it's complicated: reasonable-sounding policies work their way to unreasonable results in various subsets of cases.
The point is, I think, how you interpret "free speech". In his own tweet [0], he says:
"By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law."
The information @ElonJet is publishing is publicly available. One interpretation says: if it's publicly available information, then preventing it being republished is censorship. Therefore Musk is breaking his own rule.
Another interpretation says: whilst it's freely-available information, publishing risks increased harm to Musk himself. I'm no expert on US law, but I'd imagine there's some sort of provision that protects against deliberately risking harm to someone. Assuming that's the case, Musk is being consistent with his own rule.
Given his public profile - and his desire/willingness/record of being provocative - I'd imagine most will adopt the former interpretation.
The current interpretation of the 1st Amendment is that anything less than "Fighting Words" (something that will “produce a clear and present danger of a serious intolerable evil that rises above mere inconvenience or annoyance”) the government can't interfere with. The delineated exceptions to free speech are obscenity (which is very poorly defined: the famous Potter Stewart line 'I know it when I see it'), child pornography (reasonably clearly defined), fighting words (defined above) or the related "true and imminent threat to violence or other lawless actions" (emphasis on imminent and lawless). Reposting publicly available data falls into none of those exceptions (after all, the government is the original source of this data!), so the government could not legally take this sort of action, here in the United States.
As an example of what a jury has found to be true and imminent threat, Flip Benham's Save America organization was printed up and distributed "Wanted" posters, with the names and home addresses of doctors who provided abortion services, and put the posters up on the homes and around the neighborhoods of the doctors. Things that don't rise to that level of threat are protected by the 1st Amendment against government retaliation.
Musk is, of course, free to not follow the guidelines that the Government is required to. But by the same token, we have free speech rights and are free to criticize him, make fun of him, and otherwise denigrate him for being a lawless hypocrite who is actively promoting evil in the world.
He has the best security detail in the world, but yeah, seems like an unnecessary security risk. I'm sure if a federal agency requested this bot be taken down as a security concern it would be a reasonable request. More reasonable that many other requests made under the veil of "security"
> I'm sure if a federal agency requested this bot be taken down
Which they wouldn't do because the secret service isn't stupid. They know that current location has very little impact on security. It is future movements that allow you to plan an attack, which are closely guarded.
While I think things could have been done in a clearer and more above-board way, Twitter does seem to have an anti-doxxing policy that includes sharing non-public information about a person's presumed location. So a bot that crowdsourced a politician's location would seem to also be in violation of this policy.
I'm flabbergasted by the overwhelming response that this account should be allowed "in the name of Free Speech". This isn't a free speech issue. This is a personal safety issue. It is a personal attack towards Musk. As high profile as he is, and the amount of controversy surrounding him, he certainly has a target on his back. I consider that account a form of Doxxing, and I can't think of any good reason it should be allowed to exist. It feels like everyone is so upset with Elon, that we all want to play this game of "Gotcha" with every move he makes. Doesn't seem like anyone is considering that account is a real safety/ security issue for him.
I honestly would not have cared about the account being banned, except for the fact that Musk won points for nobly saying he would not ban the account.
It may be public information but how easy is it for the common Joe to look up a specific person's flight information?
I'm genuinely curious because if it takes a few steps and knowing a couple of bits of information then maybe that is a problem. I mean, the FAA records or wherever they're getting the information doesn't have it labeled "Elon's Jet", does it?
The Twitter account likely makes it dead simple for any bloke off the street to know where it is.
Well that doesn't answer the question. Figuring out who owns that particular jet, and or what it's license number is is not obvious. One more step down the line. How would a normal person know who owns "FALCON LANDING LLC". Point is, unless you read the ElonJet account, most normies would have a hard time figuring out all of this. Just because it's public information doesn't mean it's easy to find for normal people. That account is Doxxing, plain and simple. But you guys are welcome to keep defending it I guess.
Public information or not, that doesn't make it ethical. It would be different if it tracked other celebrities also. It's a personal attack. I don't know why I have to explain why it would be a safety threat, but sure. Someone who wanted to do harm to Elon having easy access to his whereabouts at all time? Put yourself in his shoes. Would that make you feel more or less safe? And these days, someone wanting to harm him is not a far fetched idea. I don't care that it's public information, most people wouldn't even know that it is, let alone where to find and parse the data. Just because you can publish information like this doesn't mean it's ethical, or it doesn't directly effect someone's well being.
Why do people arguing this point keep repeating the lie that the account tracked Elon "at all time" or similar?
The account only posted the location of Elon's private jet, which I'm pretty confident is not a threat unless an attacker has a surface to air missile ready.
Nobody said it tracked him all the time, "but it gave real time updates of where his jet took off and landed. It would be pretty easy for a crazy person to wait outside the airport with a gun and follow him. Why would you need a missile.
So because a Twitter is single purpose its bad? If the twitter account followed two peoples private jets would that be enough? Or does it need to be a whole sale repost of the entire flight tracking feed? Can the person parse ANY flight data from this type of a Twitter account? Where do you draw your arbitrary line here?
This entire premise is so very weak to me. Elon is famous and a public figure and it's his own choice that people have as much interest in him as they do. He does everything he can to be in the public eye. There are tons of plane tracking accounts or applications. There is even one that tracks AF1 which carries one of the most powerful and important people in the world.
And this isn't a location tracker. This account doesn't follow Elon around and Tweet where he's headed once he lands, how long he might be staying, where he went for lunch, etc. And Elon can use completely legal methods to reduce how much of this information is publicly available.
> Just because you can publish information like this doesn't mean it's ethical
And just because some actions MIGHT have negative outcomes doesn't mean they are unethical.
Elon has all the tools to avoid being tracked by a random flight tracking service. If he doesn't use those tools then he doesn't care that much about his privacy. He posts images of him sleeping in the Twitter HQ, which has a publicly listed address. We aren't talking about some powerless individual who is having big companies abuse their privacy.
I don't disagree with your point but this aciton puts a dent into his "free speech absolutist" position which he vigorously embraces. Being an Absolutist is probably fun position to take, but in real life nuance can make things challenging.
The college student behind the account also tracks the private jets of other prominent individuals, including Bill Gates, Trump, Bezos, and a slew of Russian oligarchs. It should be noted that at the time I'm publishing this comment, other private jet tracking accounts (e.g. @CelebJets) remain active, suggesting that this policy of protecting privacy is being selectively applied.
"Having easy access to his whereabouts at all times" is hyperbole. Only his jet is being tracked, not his physical location at all times.
> ""Having easy access to his whereabouts at all times" is hyperbole. Only his jet is being tracked, not his physical location at all times. "
But knowing when he leaves a city and arrives at another is half the battle. A bad actor who wants to do him harm now know he just landed back in Austin. So if they were planning an attack, they could then try follow him from the airport, find him at home, Twitter HQ et cetera.
And for the record, to me this isn't about Elon. I don't support any of those accounts. I don't care if it's Brad Pitt, Bezos, POTUS, or my next door neighbor, it's Doxxing and it shouldn't be tolerated.
I shouldn't have to, it's pretty obvious. But sure, if I were a crazy person hell bent on harming Elon, then that account gives me precise times and locations where I could find him and chase him down with a gun. Or hey, look. Elon landed back in Austin tonight, so I could probably find him at home, or leaving the airport soon. The Austin airport is not that big.
I honestly was unaware, but it has been pointed out to me that Elon even said as much in a tweet from 11/6. He explicitly said it's a direct threat to his personal safety. Sure, in the same tweet he said he would allow the account to continue, but I think that's a perfectly fine thing to change your mind on. I would never wish anyone's safety be put at risk for a dumb Doxxing account in the name of free speech
This guy has been actively trying to make enemies to garner a few "hello there fellow kids" points, actively uses every trick in the book to make sure he not only has to pay zilch in taxes, but draws the maximum in benefits, being one of the richest people on the planet and continuously taking credit for things he at best funded, at worst didn't do anything for. Meanwhile he's throwing up a gigantic smokescreen and misleading people in ways that benefit his company while being disastrous for the environment, and has the gall to show his ideas as some kind of divine intellect.
An account functioning as an event hub for public information regarding his jet is about the least he has to worry about once the chickens come home to roost. If the location alone was that bad, he could give a warning and ask the account to only post climate-related info. These are the people shaming you at every corner and ready to push you under the bus the moment something dares to scratch their empire.
Nothing about their existence is ethical. People defending them under the guise of 'ethics' is exactly how they got there.
Publicly available information is... publicly available information.
Singling out public information and publishing it to single out one person when there are safety and security implications is crossing the line distinctly into what we call doxxing.
Just curious, how long have you been on the internet?
Would you like an account like this to exist tracking everything you do?
Paparazzi is certainly doxxing. White house press corps, definitely not, not sure how that's comparable. ElonJet? 100% doxxing, and I don't know how anyone could argue otherwise.
Thank you, well put. It's like everyone's incredible amount of hate towards Elon is blinding them to the human aspect of this. Never seen such overwhelming support for a doxxing account. Let's not forget to be humans guys.
I do not find it well put because it is moving the goal-post. Topic is not if the account is ethical or if it is right to ban account like this. Point is about banning it from the position of 'free speech absolutist'. Free speech absolutists wants to ensure freedom of express also for things that could be considered as unethical.
In the SAME TWEET, he admitted it's a direct threat to his personal safety. Why is that something that's not okay to change your mind on? Are you arguing that his life on a day to day basis should be put in more danger is okay, in the name of some dumb ass doxxing twitter account?
This dude changes his mind every day. In what world is that how you should run a $44b company? This isn’t what he said he would do when he bought Twitter. Aren’t you upset that he straying so far from his promises?
All this kid had to do was do a little more work: Track more celebrities and top dollar folks. Make it general. Maybe they'd converge on him, but at least Elon wouldn't have a leg to stand on. Instead this kid does minimal work, it goes viral, and everyone is crying about it. Pathetic.
I'm loving the selective memories so many folks have here, acting as though they are remotely consistent with application of ethics.
What is the actual risk? I suspect he's way more likely to get into a car crash.
The information about his plane's location is already public. Posting it to twitter just makes it spread further. Also, a plane's location isn't very useful. Even doxxing someone's permanent address (not that elon has one) is a pretty minimal threat to their life.
A plane's location is some of the less dangerous speech allowed.
It should be obvious, but to a crazy person who is interested in harming Elon, this is a gift wrapped up under the Christmas tree. Great, now they can wait outside the airport, or know that he just flew home to Austin tonight, or landed in SF to go to Twitter HQ. Nobody would know what jet Elon owned if it weren't for that account.
I couldn't care less about Elon, unlike seemingly everyone else here. It's not about him. I would not support that type of account if it were targeting Brad Pitt, POTUS, or even my next door neighbor.
Seems like you're explaining exactly the intent of this account: Proving that putting free speech above all other values on an internet forum isn't always a good idea, even if it's legal.
No one actually thinks this account is valuable on it's own. This "Gotcha" is a hugely important point that Musk doesn't understand.
Because it's common sense? I honestly was not aware of that tweet before I posted this today. But you and others have pointed it out to me. Interesting he explicitly states it's a direct threat to his personal safety. Kind of strengthens my point no? Sure he said he would let it continue a month and a half ago, but upon further consideration, and the amount of attention it was getting I don't think it's outrageous at all for him to change his mind.
Being able to claim someone's speech makes you "unsafe" is akin to "words are violence" that the pro free speech crowd objects to. Elon may face a greater risk of harm with the world having a way to guess his location (broadly) but that's not a case to silence speech.
It should also be noted he's a billionaire. Have you seen Zuckerberg's security spending?
Coincidentally, the @TweetTweaker account — which AFAIK was the first to call wide attention [0] to Elon buying up twitter shares right after his $5k offer to @ElonJet was rebuffed — is currently suspended. Its last public interaction was around Nov 6, 2022 [1]
I believe the purchase was $44B. Elon only has some personal stake, there are loans and other investors I think. I don't know if the specific accounting of the sale is public info.
Have you seen how petty, narcissistic, and irrational this guy is? Normally I'd say that would be insane, but at this point I wouldn't put it past him.
It's not chump change for the not insanely rich, but the economics are massively different when we're talking about assets. All that happens is money moves from one asset to another; unless the buyer tanks the value of it their new assets nothing is really lost.
44 billion was around 25% of his net worth. That's a lot of money, even for Musk. If his current actions cause Tesla to be viewed less favorably and sales to decline, it could cost him a lot more than that
The Tesla brand approval rating is more negative than positive for the first time:
> On Nov. 7, for the first time since YouGov began tracking Tesla in 2016, more respondents in the U.S. reported a negative perception of Tesla than a positive view. The brand perception has eroded further since, according to YouGov data.
While we're all being glib, I don't know how you can look at America right now and think that law applies to billionaires. I would be astounded if we saw real proportional consequences against any of America's aristocracy. As long as you aren't killing or hurting other billionaires, I think they have practical blanket immunity.
I think Musk's behavior (and the behavior of a lot of public figures, really) makes more sense if you assume that he's not saying things to express ideas, but instead regards words as noises that you make with your mouth that cause other people to do or think things; if they stop having the intended effect, you have to change the noises.
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.
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 “
> 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.
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.
I have a different but similar take on this: Imagine two WWI soldiers on opposing sides hunkered down alone in their trenches within earshot of each other. One yells to the other, "Man, I'm so glad I've got my twenty comrades with me!"
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.
It's what Adam Curtis covers in HyperNormalization. I think it's less that the noises actually have any specific effect and more that they just create chaos bubbles of what is true or 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.
Yep. Poetry that leads to the horrifying realization that many of our elites live in a world surrounded by p-zombies, and somehow, this doesn't give them a moment's pause.
> 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.
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.
Does hypocrisy need to be an intentional action to be considered hypocrisy? I don't think it does. I think we can externally evaluate actions and, regardless of underlying motives, assign a value of "hypocrisy" to it.
On the other hand, if we assume that hypocrisy requires intent, then what you've instead described is "just" garden variety narcissistic sociopathy.
No hypocrisy does not require intent. I would say actually that usually it is reflexive and not intended. I w would go as far as saying we are all guilty of it sometimes.
you hit in the nail in the head, Elon Musk probably lives in a world where only he exists as a person and everyone around are just NPC's. Or maybe he believe he is nietzsche's ubermensch and thus is above the morals which bind us normal folk.
I find this armchair psychology a bit repulsive--the assumption that one has successfully dissected another and knows the base ingredients that make them tick. If you think about it, to think you know people (figures, if you like) inside out and that their behavior is simplistic and reptilian, is nearly as repugnant in itself as seeing speech as a mere series of levers and pulleys.
He trashes people who trash talk his cars. Even if you happened to die while testing his auto pilot feature. Yeah. He will trash talk you while you are rolling in your grave thinking Elon was god. And then god comes to show you how amazing your god was.
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.
I think all of this is part of his appeal. He's more "scruffy" and unfiltered than most people with his prominence and responsibilities. But it's easy to confuse this lack of a filter for honesty, when the two may be entirely orthogonal.
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.
> I think all of this is part of his appeal. He's more "scruffy" and unfiltered than most people with his prominence and responsibilities. But it's easy to confuse this lack of a filter for honesty, when the two may be entirely orthogonal.
This sounds strangely familiar to someone else that owns a Twitter-like social network.
i view Elon's fanbase as being equivalent to the fanbase that twitch streamers like xqc have, probably not well adjusted people who need to idolize someone in which they can see some characteristics in common (social awkwardness, thinking they are smarter than others etc...)
Elon's communication style is also good for forming "parasocial" relationships
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.
> it's easy to confuse this lack of a filter for honesty
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.
Remember all those comments on HN for how right Musk is to decent free speech and how this is definitely going to improve Twitter? Pepperidge Farms remembers.
Can we please have some intellectually stimulating discussion, or thoughtful jokes, or at least lowbrow humor that is somewhat original instead of these reddit-tier tired old memes..?
It's why I prefer HN over Reddit nowadays. For popular posts, you have to scroll so far on Reddit before you hit meaningful discussion. Although the anecdotes and story-telling on Reddit is unmatched.
Given the amount of downvoted "republishing public data is the real crime!" comments in this thread, tired old memes are indeed a conversational improvement.
yes, but then again I take a point against the fact that everyone is downvoting the person commenting "brilliant" about the joke account, while the joke account is left unflagged.
Man, HN is bursting at the seams with "intellectually stimulating discussions" to whet the appetite of even the most committed intellectual mastorbator. I liked the guy's username and made a remark that it fit the situation well. Rather like r/beetlejuicing. It's nice if HN also takes things a bit lightly from time to time. Not every thread needs to be strict.
Lets not pretend that just because some people happened to be right, that is an indicator of some information that they had. Most of the hate towards Twitter came from hate towards Musk.
People who tell a lot of fibs tend to get a reputation as liars. This isn't magic. There's no fancy latin name for the error of giving known liars the benefit of the doubt, but there should be.
Hmm. Good word, and close. But (at least in my English understanding) it doesn't include the ignorance of past action.
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.
After the "pedo guy" incident, Musk made it pretty clear he's thin skinned, petty and vindictive as well as pretty immature. Based on the public evidence it's hard not to predict these outcomes.
Predicting future actions based on past behavior is not some kind of magic, nor is it guesswork. People didn't throw a chip on black and spin the roulette wheel -- they made a very reasonable assumption and ended up correct. Whether there was hate involved or not is irrelevant.
Conservatives all claim to be about free speech but when we look at any of their social networks like parler, they actively censor views they don’t agree with. On social networks they don’t control, they sue parody accounts to shut them down.
Philosophically, I think his “freedom of reach” distinction is a hack/loophole without a strong basis.
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”
If there was a setting I could use to "maximum derank" my account I'd use it without hesitation. I want to talk to my friends, not get yelled at by randos. I hate it when a tweet starts getting attention.
He is using the concept of legal free speech correctly while memeing about a philosophical free speech that matches the colloquialism that many of his sycophants and observers think
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.
When the Elon/Twitter transaction went through, there were a lot of HN comments stating that they thought that this might actually mean a more open, "freer" Twitter.
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.
Serious question: Is there an alternative narrative here? People are acting like Musk changed course for no reason, but are there no real claims that the account perhaps had started to engage in other rule-breaking content?
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.
> People are acting like Musk changed course for no reason
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 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.
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?
> As far as I can tell Musk is currently self-destructing for no apparent reason -- how is that best 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.
> 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.
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.
> As far as I can tell Musk is currently self-destructing for no apparent reason -- how is that best for him?
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.
That's the impression I'm getting as well. Whatever one thinks about Musk's failings and failures, I find it hard to believe that he can't come up with something better than a series of unforced own goals like the Elon Jet suspension (already backpedaled on) unless he's surrounded himself by people who only tell him what he wants to hear.
Why do you assume he is listening to (or even seeking) advice before acting? Sure, being surrounded by “yes men” could be a problem, but its very hard from the outside to distinguish that from just being impulsive and not seeking input on the first place.
The observable difference I'd expect to see is that an impulsive guy not surrounded by "yes men" will still periodically commit avoidable errors, but not engage in a sequence of related blunders because someone will bring it home to him that things are moving in a bad direction.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
That suggests people hand out equal hate to all billionaires. JK Rawling seems like an obvious exception to that narrative.
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.
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.
I don’t know the specifics about her finances but:
“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/
Nobody gives a shit about Bernard Arnault who is now the richest man so maybe people don't like Elon's actions more than they don't like his money.
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
That seems unlikely, that’s about the rate people give silly answers to pollsters.
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.
This yougov poll[0] seems to suggest around 20% of democrats and independents vs. 40% of Republicans believe the gates conspiracy. You also just quoted something that backs up what I said?
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
> That suggests people hand out equal hate to all billionaires
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.
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.
No, that's not what I'm saying, nor is that a reasonable interpretation of my comment. I'm saying that this formulation is irrational: "many billionaires do bad things, ergo it's justified to hate any billionaire".
>I mean, if you have to irrationally hate someone, I guess billionaires are going to be the ones with the resources to handle it,
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.
> 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.
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".
I thought he mentioned increasing the removal of illegal content and ensuring that public discourse wasn't influenced/manipulated, by state actors, overwhelmingly towards one side over another?
Yes you're interpreting his completely nonsubstantive "rule-by-implicature" as intended: Elon said he was gonna do Good Things and he's gonna stop Bad Things and I don't really need to think about what constitutes either of those things.
Steel manning really only works if you can assume the other person continues to argue in good faith. If the other person keeps moving the goalposts and demanding you construct a strong argument for their behavior they're just being abusive and I would suggest the best course of action is to leave.
Steelmanning requires the person you're talking to to be arguing in good faith, not the actual subjects of the narrative being steelmanned. The whole point of steelmanning is to grant those subjects good faith even if you personally think it's unwise, because the person you're talking to may disagree...
In the context of moving the goalposts, you are asking other commenters to justify another person's actions that are increasingly at odds with their words.
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.
>you are asking other commenters to justify another person's actions that are increasingly at odds with their words.
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.
Why does anyone care about alternative "narratives"? Are there any other facts that one might like to introduce? Not alternative facts, things that actually happened.
Because sometimes they are very relevant. The Kanye ban and the details around it are one example as Kanye clearly wanted people to believe it was for a different reason than it was.
I'm not saying this applies to the ElonJet case, but I can see why the question would be asked.
This same account said elsewhere in this thread "I can't think of any", about times Elon Musk has said he would do one thing, then went on to do another. This is someone who is for some reason really trying to defend Musk.
Yes, I have a lower prior than you that Musk just randomly changes his opinions all the time for no reason. And I've asked for meaningful evidence that would help me update this prior. Is this really an unfathomably bizarre epistemic strategy to you?
I am being honest here and not trying to score any points or "own" you: you might want to re-read your comments, because you don't come across as someone looking to update "priors", you come across as an Elon fanboi who has somehow decided to go to bat for him in the HN comments.
I’m still reading through this read, but your response seems like it ended up on the wrong comment or something? Because their ask does not in any way read as an Elon fanboy. I admit I may get egg in my face down thread but their top level ask is sane.
Yeah it's the right place, but I was talking about their (many) comments in this entire thread. A few have been been downvoted and might not be visible anymore. Basically this person is being a bit disingenuous, they've not entered the discussion - as they claim - with an open mind, looking to be challenged and the vibe from their comments in aggregate is decidedly pro-Musk. Nothing wrong with being pro-Musk on it's own, but they go a little above and beyond.
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 :)
Yep, you are right. I can find a principle that I agree with in their words - much of the criticism is lazy and makes assumptions about personal motive when there are much stronger and more damming arguments available and we should hold ourselves to a higher standard - but their response to the examples raised is to try and put more work on their conversational partner.
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.
>Basically this person is being a bit disingenuous, they've not entered the discussion - as they claim - with an open mind, looking to be challenged and the vibe from their comments in aggregate is decidedly pro-Musk
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.
Completely independent of the topic at hand, I want to point out to you that you ask for a lot more than you give throughout. You read as sincere which is why I think it’s important to note that that behavior can be used to very effectively intentionally derail a conversation by virtue of becoming a huge time sink.
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.
>Completely independent of the topic at hand, I want to point out to you that you ask for a lot more than you give throughout
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.
Well, the example came up of Musk intending to buy Twitter and then trying to back out. The plausible justification for flip-flopping is that an internal review unveiled information that would justify this. It's really not hard to imagine.
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.
>Why does anyone care about alternative "narratives"?
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.
Is it not his company? Is he under obligation to not change his mind?
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.
It seems like these are a bunch of scattershot points that don’t add up to a cohesive argument. On top of this, “answer for this other thing someone I’ve decided to associate with you said” is one of my least favorite debate techniques.
Because facts can be interpreted in different ways. Any action can be interpreted as self-interest, but perhaps the true motive is different. You gave money to a school to pay for lunches? You were just trying to get your name in a newspaper because of your ego. Or maybe, just maybe, you're a person trying to do the right thing and make the world a slightly better place.
All the worst people I've ever known have argued against any goodness or altruism existing.
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.
> You gave money to a school to pay for lunches? You were just trying to get your name in a newspaper because of your ego.
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.
There is an alternative justification in the right to privacy. Such accounts are indeed reckless with no corresponding need to know. No one's free speech rights are being suppressed here.
This has been discussed many times - the flight data and aircraft registration details are publicly accessible via the FAA. Posting that data in an easily accessible form hardly violates anyone's privacy.
To be fair, there is a difference when its made extremely accessible. Even the courts have seen this as a key difference with surveillance.
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.
Perhaps a public interest argument could be made here for making this information more accessible. The whereabouts of a CEO of multiple companies could be of interest for investment decisions. For an ordinary private citizen this would be different.
You're right. It is contingent on the rule being applied fairly. Any one person making these decisions is bound to exhibit a bias, but we do not know if it was his decision alone. He may very well have asked others if it would be fair. That said, the real test will be if he can establish a fair system that self-patrols the speech on twitter.
Sure it does. Being able to observe license plates on the street is different from observing all license plates and publishing a real time feed of their location.
Don't be silly. Musk just wants to ban their Twitter account if they start to post the information to his specific plane. As long as they post specifics about someone else's plane, their account will be considered in good standing.
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".
Can I attach a GPS tracker to your car and publish the coordinates in real time to the internet?
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.
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.
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.
> There is an alternative justification in the right to privacy. Such accounts are indeed reckless with no corresponding need to know. No one's free speech rights are being suppressed here.
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.
He literally just unbanned an account that tried to run a coup on the federal government and yet an account that shows where his jet is is dangerous?
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.
The account that first posted a video of Elon being booed on stage at a recent comedy show, was swiftly suspended. It's very difficult to deny this quacks like a duck.
I believe the account he banned vs unbanned has a distinction. One account alligns with his long term strategy for $x whereas the other competes against his $x strategy.
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.
Here's my best guess: Musk lives in a bubble of yes men 24x7, except Sunday night he was on stage with Chapelle getting slapped in the face by over 10,000 people who clearly didn't like him. Probably a defining moment in his life that shook him to the core and genuinely scared him.
If you respond to the reporting of non-editorialized, objective fact with the question "Is there an alternative narrative?", I think it is time to check your own biases.
I'm not disputing the fact that the account was banned, but the implicit assumption that people are making that it was banned simply because Musk woke up today and decided that he was tired of it.
I get that much. I'm asking why would you think that there is a narrative to this ban, given the content of recent events regard Musk's stewardship of Twitter.
Is there some context to this account's history regarding the Twitter Terms of Service that would legitimately lead you to think this?
I dont think he changed his mind, its just clear what his goal in buying Twitter was from the get go - the "free speech absolutionism" is the PR speak for getting more conservative/right leaning people onto Twitter, and that goal is solely for
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.
At the rate he's destroying everything he should probably make a 'plan B' then because this one does not appear to be working on a time frame that will get him out of the hot water before the boiling point.
Oh, so you can provide another example of Elon directly saying he would do X and then turning around and doing not-X a month or so later with no sort of intervening events that would justify an about-face? I can't think of any.
I thought the court ordered Musk to buy Twitter? I wasn't paying terribly close attention, so maybe I misunderstood something? Also, what was the November statement where Musk said he wouldn't fire most of Twitter? I missed that one.
Musk announced his intent to actually consummate the deal with Twitter about two weeks before the trial was going to start (and right before he was going to be deposed for said trial).
> I thought the court ordered Musk to buy Twitter?
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.
> Because Elon Musk signed an ironclad contract promising to buy Twitter.
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). :/
If I go to a car dealer and sign on the dotted line to buy a car, I've committed to buying the car. It doesn't matter if tomorrow, before I've taken delivery, I decide I hate that car brand and want a different one. You don't get to "change your mind" AFTER you sign the contract!
I've been explicit twice that I'm not arguing about whether or not Musk tried to renege on his contract, but for the third time: I'm questioning the parent's claim about whether he reneged and then changed his mind __again__. That said, if you commit to buying a car, but the car that is delivered to you is not what you ordered, you absolutely are not compelled to take delivery--this is basically what Musk was asserting: that the Twitter that was advertised was not the Twitter that was being delivered. Apparently it was looking like the court wasn't buying that claim, which spurred Musk to move forward with the acquisition.
>He won't buy Twitter because it has a bot problem.
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.
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?
>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.
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).
>Elon himself chose to eschew due diligence when he signed the first intent to buy.
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.
>He specifically claimed that the offer was truly unconditional, no matter what sort of fraud or criminality might be occurring within Twitter?
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.
"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.
> Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints.
> No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes.
> 9:18 PM · Oct 28, 2022
> The people have spoken.
> Trump will be reinstated.
> Vox Populi, Vox Dei.
> 2:53 AM · Nov 20, 2022
He is definitely changing course here (he has publicly stated he wouldn’t squash this account) but my idea is, one of his peons is enforcing some policy about automated scripts controlling accounts. Has anyone read the TOS or seen what has changed?
The implication that free speech people are hypocrites is a little premature. The policies just changed. I'm sure there will be several opportunities before the day is over to gotcha someone in some genuine hypocrisy, but let's see how this one plays out.
If there was nobody would know about it because it literally just happened! This is one of the reasons I always flag these "breaking ragebait controversy" Twitter threads - even if someone's curious and genuinely wants to understand an issue in its full context, they can't. The only options right now are to wait for more information or get mad based on incomplete information.
That is silly. Anybody who really wants to know where that jet is won't be relying on an entertainment account on Twitter, they'll just use FlightRadar24 to get it real time.
There's a lot of crazy unstable people, they wont know about or be able to regularly plan monitoring FlightRadar24. They can however see "Musk lands in Chicago Midway" and run down there.
So, yes a targeted organized attack wouldn't be overly hard a random chaotic attack is easier with this twitter account.
By the time you found out a plane landed in Chicago, it's waaaaaay too late to intercept. People that stupid aren't a danger. It's exactly the people who know you can use public ADS-B trackers to see flight plans and predict landing times that you might actually worry about.
This is a great line of reasoning that can be used to justify banning anything. What if a soft-headed person reads it and does something horrible... Like, say, attempt to carry out a coup?
It'd be great if the same standard were applies to things like bomb threats at children's hospitals because some fruit loops have convinced themselves that Pepe Silvia is hiding there, or that drag shows are an existential threat which much be opposed with gunfire.
What about all of the death threats that politicians and election workers in Georgia received because of Trump pushing election lies on platforms like Twitter?
Georgia's Secretary of State and his family received death threats.
1) Your comment is a red herring; it's not related to what I said
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.
The comment wasn't directed at you personally but the premise that "it might just be for security". If it's "just security" then it's clear that he only cares about his own security.
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.
I am rarely on twitter (just reading financial macro discussions, for which twitter seems to be a center of excellence), so probably have skewed priors. That said, skimming this information I see nothing particularly bad in banning the account that posted screenshots of internal confidential discussions.
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.
An outsider being given access to confidential customer information in Europe would immediately be flagged as a GDPR violation, and given the circumstances it would probably be a reportable one as well. Don't make light of this.
Of course there are other narratives. You're limited by your creativity. Generally the one that involves the least creativity prevails. There's a huge constituency ready to jump on Musk for whatever, and here they are, because it's easy. Until there's facts just stay agnostic...
Nuance and context like "Elon is bad, of course he's bad" and "of course this is hypocrisy and nothing more"...because that's what we've gotten so far. As usual, there are two sides to every story unless your name is Elon, Trump, or other $UNPOPULAR_FIGURE
Yeah, god forbid somebody asks for more nuance. What is this, Reddit? We're mature here, we do quality comments like "Elon Musk has the emotional stability of a teenager hitting puberty", "Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Elon Musk", and so on (actual comments on this thread).
Unfortunately we do not live in a world where in order to criticise someone we must analyze the morality of their entire life. This isn't "The Good Place"
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
Commitment (his word, not yours) is a bit strong. The vast majority of free speech related discussion is disingenuous, ignorant or otherwise unserious.
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.
> serious question, does free speech extend to doxing
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.
So Elon should then take it up with the famously quick and efficient US Government, just like the rest of us who are harmed by speech that the USG has not declared illegal. If he suffers any harm in the meantime, then well, that's just the cost of Free Speech! Sorry, Elon! Hooray, Free Speech!
right, I'll meet the annoying persistent sarcasm with some more. We should go back to the old twitter! Where woke 30 year old ivy league graduates get to decide the conversational overton window! That was so much better than aspiring to this free speech garbage!
That's the point, right? You obviously can't fall back on "anything legal is allowed." That's a stupid policy and nobody actually wants it, as the actions this thread is discussing proves. So someone has to draw the boundaries. I'd much rather have a group of experts debating & making the hard decisions than a single sociopathic billionaire. Yes, they'll get it wrong sometimes, and that sucks, but it's the least-bad possible arrangement.
For the first 20-ish years of my life, a physical copy of the telephone directory listing almost all local subscribers (including my parents and by extension me), was physically posted to every subscriber's house.
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.
What a coincidence. I too lived during the era of open directories... and it was horrifyingly stupid. We got our number delisted as soon as possible because we didn't need random idiots calling us at all hours because they thought it was funny. I don't care that other people were fine with being listed. People have a right to privacy, and moreover a right not to be stalked and harassed. We don't tolerate people posting each others' personal information, public or otherwise, to stalk and harass one another *ON ANY PLATFORM*. That doesn't change just because it's someone who's "a public figure" or, more accurately, someone you don't like. Either the rules exist for everyone or not at all... and if it's not at all then drop the pretense and just admit you want to hurt him any way you can.
Who's this 'we' and why would random idiots be calling you at all hours? There was nothing horrifyingly stupid about it, that was how people got in touch with each other before it was convenient to do so via the internet.
I don't think that's true, most cases of doxxing happen with publicly available information. But I guess you could argue doxxing isn't really "illegal."
Most doxing involves using publicly available information to harass others... and yet that behavior is frowned upon everywhere. I don't think anyone here honestly believes that account was used for anything other than to encourage the stalking and harassment of Elon Musk because the account owner simply doesn't like him. I also don't think anyone here seriously believes that stalking and harassing people is "free speech". I do believe people here are letting their class bias show.
How does flight data encourage stalking and harassment? The account is run by the same person who tracks the flights of other wealthy and notable people as well. Why weren’t those taken down?
I am genuinely interested in what you think the difference between those two things is. I don't see how "the white pages" is any more safe or secure than "everyone"...
It isn't. My point here being that just because something is public information does not mean you have any business circulating it specifically to encourage the stalking and harassment of others. Your freedom of speech ends short of stalking and harassing others. Lawfully contacting someone is one thing... but tracking someone's every movement is another, and you know it.
I agree that my freedom of speech ends short of stalking and harassing people! I just don't think that re-posting publicly available information qualifies as stalking or harassing. And I think it's a very big stretch to claim that it even comes close to facilitating stalking or harassing. Has Elon himself even claimed any actual negative impacts due to this information/account, or has he just expressed concerns about the possibility?
Also, "and you know it" is insulting and rude, and I don't agree with it or appreciate it.
I don't know whether I think it's free speech honestly, but I think the more relevant question here is whether Musk would consider it "free speech" to post the same type of information about someone else.
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.
Is it? What exactly is the functional difference between Musk revealing private corporate communications to a rabid audience looking for a target? Like you didn't actually explain how it's different.
Did he publish where they lived or currently were or simply the things they said? I'm sure anyone can see the difference between these two things.
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.
He published who they were, when they were previously unknown. I'm sure you can understand why unmasking someone like this is a problem, correct? If you can't then I don't think you value your current anonymity enough.
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.
Elon, like a lot of people underestimates how much power corrupts. It is really easy to say "I would never cheat on my boyfriend/girlfriend when you don't have tons of attractive people throwing themselves at you" same thing here. It is really easy to say you believe in free speech when you don't have the ability to silence someone that you think may be putting your family in danger.
If he was personally involved, then yes, that's fucked up.
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.
- "A screenshot of what he claimed was an internal Slack channel showed Ella Irwin, the person appointed to replace Yoel Roth as Twitter’s new head of trust and safety, asking a “Team” to “please apply heavy VF to @elonjet immediately."
https://www.thedailybeast.com/twitter-account-following-elon... ("Twitter Account Tracking Elon Musk’s Private Jet Gets Shadow Banned")
https://twitter.com/JxckSweeney/status/1601793881355739143