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"so far, i’ve been able to confirm about half the accounts suspended posted links to the jet tracker thing in violation of the new doxx’ing policy. unclear just yet about the rest, but i think it’s safe to say the rule is for real."

https://twitter.com/micsolana/status/1603570995490455552

Musk replied:

"Same doxxing rules apply to “journalists” as to everyone else"

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603573725978275841



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Musk tweeted in apparent reference to this:

"Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation. This includes posting links to sites with real-time location info.

Posting locations someone traveled to on a slightly delayed basis isn’t a safety problem, so is ok."

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603181423787380737


> Update: Musk just weighed in on the suspensions, characterizing them as intentional. “Same doxxing rules apply to “journalists” as to everyone else,” he tweeted in a reply.

> It’s worth noting that the policy these accounts violated, a prohibition against sharing “live location information,” is only 24 hours old.

It seems like a good rule, but in this case the application of the rule seems less impersonal than it could be

Let’s try to make a comment that creates less outrage than most…

This is why it would be interesting to post public information about politicians collected from the online spyware that tracks all of us. It would rapidly motivate new laws that at least somewhat improve privacy.

This always happens when rule makers are personally affected by a problem: the problem starts getting attention


Musk:

"New Twitter policy is freedom of speech"

also Elon Musk:

"accounts promoting competitors will be deleted"

Musk:

"I won't ban the account tracking my plane"

Also Musk:

"The account tracking my plane is banned"

Musk:

"Doxing is bad and any accounts that mention or link to or report on anything doxing will be banned"

Also Musk:

"legion of followers who is this paparazzi? Here is is licence plate. Someone tell us all who he is".

Must be nice to be able to buy and sell your version of free speach that is free only as long as it does not irritate you.


Elon Musk @elonmusk: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603181423787380737

"Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation. This includes posting links to sites with real-time location info.

Posting locations someone traveled to on a slightly delayed basis isn’t a safety problem, so is ok."


‘Mr. Musk tweeted last month: “My com­mit­ment to free speech ex­tends even to not ban­ning the ac­count fol­low­ing my plane, even though that is a di­rect per­sonal safety risk.” On Wednes­day, though, he equated the prac­tice to doxxing, or the pub­lish­ing of pri­vate in­for­ma­tion on­line with ma­li­cious in­tent, tweet-ing: “Real-time post­ing of some­one else’s lo­ca­tion vi­o­lates doxxing pol­icy, but de­layed post­ing of lo­ca­tions are ok.”’

In the article update, it says that Elon commented on suspensions and it looks like the suspensions are for doxxing. If that's the case, it makes perfect sense to me. The doxxing has been rampant of Twitter, including by many of the journalists.

> Not to mention a doxing that is my understanding violation of T's policy. But yes, you then have to ban Gatesjet, Puinjet and so forth.

https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/personal-info...

Twitter's policies define doxxing as the posting of private information that was not made publicly available by the owner. They also specifically allow "sharing information that is publicly available elsewhere, in a non-abusive manner".

ElonJet and all of the other similar bots tracking interesting aircraft are using information that is broadcast unencrypted by the aircraft itself to anyone within radio range (sometimes hundreds of miles) who has a compatible receiver (including the famous $15 RTL-SDR) and publicly shared through multiple aggregators like ADS-B Exchange, FlightAware, and FlightRadar24.

This data is legally required to be broadcast, so it's definitely not private, and it's definitely publicly available elsewhere.

Elon would probably argue that it was abusive, but that's a lot more subjective. As far as I'm aware the account never tweeted anything but the facts of his jet's movements.


> Twitter's policies define doxxing as the posting of private information that was not made publicly available by the owner.

Musk didn’t make the data available so we can discount that.

> They also specifically allow "sharing information that is publicly available elsewhere, in a non-abusive manner".

Yes. Sharing information to make people track a person’s movements could be considered abusive.

I suspect this is a mistake though and Musk will have twitter re enable the account.


Elon said:

>Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation. This includes posting links to sites with real-time location info.

From https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603181423787380737

You can see Twitter's full policy here: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/personal-info...

A hypothetical account that broadcasted the location of marginalized people in real time would not be allowed, is my understanding.

I think it would be good if we could get past the "your team vs my team" thing and talk about the best set of speech principles overall.


> This time, it is clear that it applies and is enforced on everyone, journalist or not

This is a brand new rule, announced after the fact, and applied so far only to exactly one circumstance that happens to be personally related to the CEO. Arguing that this is a fair application of a well-considered policy is just ridiculous, sorry. For that matter, if Musk's wasn't actually in the air at the time of the bannings, it's not even clear that the stated policy was even applied correctly! All the journalists did was post links that allows you to find ElonsJet on Facebook, AFAICT. That's not "real time" info, is it?

Let me know when someone else gets banned for "doxxing" that involves something as simple as this. You know it's not going to happen, right? Posting a link to Kiwifarms should result in the same treatment, right?


Wouldn't be too sure about that:

> Same doxxing rules apply to “journalists” as to everyone else

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603573725978275841


Musk says (https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603591994244071424): "7 day suspension for doxxing. Some time away from Twitter is good for the soul …"

Maybe it's time for him to follow his own advice.

And maybe stop doing polls, especially ones he doesn't like the result of and must "redo":

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603609278664712192


The rule was made afterwards. It was a retcon to justify his actions.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjk5yx/elon-musk-had-his-mos...

> 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.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589414958508691456

It is very clear that if Musk wants you off Twitter enough, he's kicking you off Twitter.


Thanks for that link. I wasn't aware that he suspended journalists at that time. However, I do note that they were only suspended and not banned. And this is consistent with what he has said on a number of occasions, that people might get 'timeouts' (in this case for doxing) but he's against permanent bans. Just checked two of the accounts (Ryan Mac, @RMac18 and Aaron Rupar, @atrupar) named in the article and they are active today.

I would like to know if there are any journalists he has permanently banned. As used to happen quite often on twitter, pre-Musk acquisition.


The Twitter accounts of journalists are also being suspended, presumably because they dared to talk about ElonJet:

https://twitter.com/drewharwell

https://twitter.com/RMac18

https://twitter.com/donie

This journalist has not been suspended yet: https://twitter.com/oliverdarcy

This is not a good look for Twitter or for Musk.


Elon publicly admitted that the Mastodon policy was a mistake and has since retracted that policy.

WRT the elonjet thing, they have a policy against doxxing.

>Twitter also banned Sweeney’s personal account and his other two accounts tracking the private jets of Donald Trump and Mark Zuckerberg.

Seems like it was applied fairly to me.


> I'm not sure that is true.

It's at the very least Musk's explanation. Lorenz's tweet with her offsite links predates the new policy; if they're related, the policy was a retroactive explanation similar to how they made up the "no real-time location" policy after banning @elonjet.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11550753/Taylor-Lor... has a screenshot of her Tweeting him asking for comment on a story that came out today, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/12/18/details.... That, IMO, is the most likely explanation for the action.

> And she is unsuspended already.

Yes, he's gotten a lot of backlash today.


It's because they linked to the ElonJet site. He said as much; https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1603573725978275841 >Same doxxing rules apply to “journalists” as to everyone else

The new submissions are about Musk banning journalists that he claims to have doxxed him, i.e. shared links to the flight tracker for his jet. However, some journalists have already come out and said they never shared the link. So it does seem worthy of discussion beyond the general change in Twitter policy.
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