I think there’s a decent chance this was a bit of “malicious compliance” by someone inside Twitter, rather than a personal decision by Musk himself.
And lest you think this sounds like I’m defending him, I think that explanation actually makes it funnier: give a brutally honest demonstration of the absurdity and hypocrisy of this policy by banning someone Musk probably wouldn’t actually enforce the policy on, and then say you were just following orders.
It's possible that the account was "reportmaxxed", i.e. some people mass-reported the account and triggered an automatic ban. Since the goal is to cause a fuss and this ban has done that, it's not entirely unreasonable.
It's also very possible that Elon just changed his mind and decided that nobody would really care if he banned ElonJet, because everyone has made up their minds about his Twitter policies anyway. I wouldn't put it past him for a second.
I assume that the next reporter he talks to will jump at the chance to grill him on it, so we won't be wondering for very long.
I think it was this: she tagged Elon (and emailed him), so he went looking at her account. Found some older posts and reported them (maybe his assistant did that).
And the account was banned until the links are removed by the account owner (this is how twitter deals with such posts).
Taylor Lorenz did enough harm already, for example, revealing identity of libsoftiktok was inappropriate, she is a bad person.
I don't think that anything prior to rule introduction should stay forever. If she was forced to delete it, that's fine.
Elon is slowly learning why all the policies that twitter used to have existed.
In this case, twitter previously used to have clear content policies and would take down content that violated their own policies, and governments would generally let twitter do content moderation in accordance with twitter's own policies, because that was predictable and manageable.
In the name of free speech, Elon decided that twitter would not take down content unless it was illegal instead of maintaining their own content policy. The brazilian government has realized that twitter has effectively delegated their content policy to the government, and is taking advantage of that for their own gain. Elon does not like this.
> Banning them for that seems aggressive (vs: blocking/removing that tweet), but it's at least consistent.
In other cases, twitter accounts were only suspended temporarily, and given that there was nothing about that in the TOS, and Musk updated it post-facto says that they should have never been banned in the first place, the tweets should have been deleted, and that's it.
> On Wednesday, Twitter chief Elon Musk banned accounts he said he never would in order to protect free speech, made up new rules to justify it, threatened legal action against a 20-year-old, pontificated on how doxing is banned on the platform, and then immediately posted a video doxing a man and asked his 121 million followers to identify him.
> Twitter then retroactively added a new policy that banned accounts "dedicated to sharing someone's live location."
He had previously publicly promised not to ban the account.
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'm saying that the formerly most famous tweeter (trump) fluted rules that would have gotten my account banned. Twitter didn't ban trump until after Jan 6th; so Twitter doesn't have any way to legally justify banning Elon unless he does something equally egregious. That's why Elon didn't get banned for the pedo claims or the multiple SEC violations. He is such a notable figure that Twitter can't ban him (without violating the terms of the acquisition) without stupendously egregious evidence that Elon violated their terms.
If Twitter banned Elon's account for a minor TOC violation now, they would likely expose themselves to legal retaliation. Sucks, but it seems we both agree that there are separate rules for the ultra-wealthy.
Edit: I can't swing any stocks with my tweets; whereas Musk can. That is the difference, is who has the platform.
When I said last thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33988883) I was awaiting to see what moderation rationale Elon would use I was not expecting "making up new rules" and banning ex post facto.
But unbanning the account without an apology is somehow weirder.
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?
Actually it was the other way around. The Sun King himself typed the three magic letters after banning the account https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603160241352462336 which probably led someone scrambling to update the policy.
Possibly in response to their tweet about the @elonjet account on Mastodon. Banning someone for talking about or linking to something that would break rules if it were on Twitter seems contrary to the variant of free speech Elon Musk claimed to support pre-Twitter purchase.
Elon Musk has done a lot of nasty things after taking over Twitter. He has acted basically like a conquerer taking over an evil country, then publicizing all the evil things that have been happening in the country: publicly deriding engineers and their work, deriding management decisions with his "Twitter files" exposés, public firings, followed by abusing remaining employees, refusing to pay bills, letting nazis and vaccine deniers back in, and so on.
Of all those things that Musk has done, the one that paulg chose to highlight is Twitter banning links to competitors? That doesn't even seem like an unreasonable restriction!
Either:
1) This is a change to policy, or
2) Twitter didn't enforce the rules evenly to punish people they didn't like, like Elon
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