I was honestly surprised that I reached level 11, the last 3 levels felt like I completely forgot the number, but my subconsciousness seemed to remember after all. Missed out by 1 number as well on the last one :')
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.
Banning accounts such as this is not at all inconsistent with banning accounts with the stated intent to track or surveil an individual. Accounts such as this are dangerous and no one needs to know his travel plans. The need for privacy does not interfere with anyone's freedom of speech here.
To put it in such a highly accessible form is an invitation to crackpots. Crackpots and mobs generally do not get incited by FAA travel logs that requires some diligence to track.
Oh, so this publicly accessible information should not be subject to free speech, even though it's clearly publicly available? Should all speech that could incite crackpots be limited?
Flightradar24, as well as all sorts of similar services (FlightAware, ADSB-Exchange, etc.) let anyone watch the location of any aircraft with ADS-B in real time (as well as list everywhere the plain has been and playback previous flights)
So we should shut down flightradar24, too, I assume? Because that's a lot more highly accessible than a twitter account and has real time status. On all planes, not just Elon's. The horror!
One could argue, none of the FAA data should be public information... I personally think that's the case. All the FAA really needs to know is where all the objects are, not specific planes.
In the early days of aviation, when flight information was not public, hundreds of people would routinely die in airplane crashes. Those days are over because flight plans are now public information. When you're in the sky, you are under surveillance, no matter who you are. If you deviate from your flight plan, that is also known. It must be this way, for the safety of everyone else in the sky around you.
I don’t see that as a fair equivalent - it’s a legal broadcast, it’s not obscured or private by any means. Every time that plane changes destinations it’s a legal requirement to put that information out into the open.
He just doesn’t like it, so goodbye freedom of speech.
Even the CIA flights of kidnapped people to the various black prison sites were public. Using that data, the Austrian Airfoce intercepted and escorted one of those flights out of Austrian airspace.
It doesn't matter if its publicly available. To aggregate the data in such an easily accessible form is an invitation to crackpots. Few crackpots are going to seek out such information unless they are truly dedicated from the get-go.
Before ElonJet was suspended their pinned tweet pointed out that Twitter's acceptable use policy was that it was ok to republish data generally available elsewhere - which is exactly what this is. It would be illegal to operate the jet and not publish its location.
So we are imagining someone is dedicated enough to go to jail for the rest of their lives for some assassination attempt but not quite dedicated enough to look up information themselves?
Exactly. Pre-Elon Twitter was all about the need to censor information because of a supposed risk of danger. As the twitter files indicate, often this risk was not readily apparent. Accounts that track high profile people's travel plans is such an evident risk. If are not willing to apply your rule equally to everyone, you really are not in a position to be making these decisions.
This question is clearly not relevant to the parent comment, since the linked tweet explicitly states that he would not ban this account as part of his commitment to free speech.
It’s not free speech if it affects someones safety. Elon is a gated figure and people knowing where he is at all times definitely would not increase safety and could prevent violence
Tracking of personal billionare jets is absolutely legal and will take exactly 5 minutes of time and $0 for anyone who decide to do it. If Musk don't like it he is free to use a car instead.
The good thing about Musk claiming Free speech absolutism is that we can hold him responsible for it. He might be a free speech NIMBY but because he claims to support free speech, his actions that clearly contradict this claim have very heavy toll on his persona.
IMHO Musk has a real opportunity to actually make Twitter great, Twitter was in a horrible shape and no one was happy with its state and I hoped that he can fix it because Musk is a product person. Unfortunately every passing day I'm losing hope. Even if he can fix it as a product, it seems like he will bomb it as a community.
No one ever forgot the calling the diver pedo incident and his handling Twitter can severely damage his image.
There is a reason why people pay Musk thousands of dollars for features that don't exist or cars that are not well build and still don't go after him like people went after Elizabeth Holmes and I'm afraid he might eventually burn out his social credit and be judged promptly for whatever he delivers without a slack.
His supporters are fanatical - none of his previous abhorrent actions have had a heavy toll, so it's unclear why this one should.
He is certainly receiving a large backlash to his recent actions, but I think that's more a case of people (outside of tech) who would've paid little attention to him before being forced to be more fully aware of his existence, than anyone who previously supported him thinking less of him.
There's a very real argument to be made now that remaining publicly in control of Tesla is bad for TSLA shareholders. The brand is going to suffer if he doesn't at least put a plausible puppet at the head of the company.
Twitter is already a lost cause. He wanted to create a more popular Parler. Probably it'll just end up in the same place with the same niche user base.
So let me list Musk’s abhorrent censorship actions:
-Bans people impersonating him like Kathy Griffin
-Bans people who share internal communications at Twitter
-Bans people who post sensitive information like his address, phone number or private jet location
-Bans a few militant Antifa groups
Is there anything else? Because I’m not seeing the abhorrent part, especially compared to pre-Musk censorship.
Why should I be outraged now? When epidemiologists were censored leading to unvaccinated being banned from society last winter, no one made a fuss about it.
Yeah, but IMO it's not that, that's all fairly easy to get at, it's this:
> Bans people who share internal communications at Twitter
Which I expect is covered by an NDA between the leaker and the company blocking the sharing of the leaks. I'd expect the same if someone at, purely for the sake of example, Blizzard started sharing internal content via World of Warcraft public chat.
I think my joke's been misinterpreted. Sharing personal information isn't the thing that different, it's the private jet location that's different from address and phone number. Having your private jet tracked is not a problem that a normal person can have. I don't think there's a reasonable expectation of privacy in regards to that.
Yeah one of the things on my list almost ruined my life last winter.
As in lose my job and be unable to socialize because I need a vaccine passport to enter a restaurant. All based on fraudulent lies that I couldn’t expose because I was censored.
Just so we're clear: You'll be totally in favor of maintaining the accounts of anyone who routinely posts the location of others, including yourself, right? Because that's not stalking at all... right?
It's all about what we call a "reasonable expectation of privacy" right? And all Sweeney did was publish information that was already publicly available[1], right?
So if someone goes around taking a picture of your vehicle everywhere you go you won't have any objections to that because you have no reasonable expectation of privacy and it's all publicly available information. Got it. I'm sure you'll stoically accept such behavior rather than scream for it to stop.
This is exactly what highway toll systems and ALPR enforcement already do.
But even on the public side: yes, this would be entirely appropriate. It's not clear what the alternative would even be; what would it look like to have civilian evidence in e.g. traffic accidents if people weren't allowed to take pictures of others' cars?
1. Highway toll systems aren't random people on Twitter.
2. In such a case you have a need to know that supersedes one's right of privacy. Are you saying you have a need to know where Elon Musk is at all times?
Elon Musk is the antithesis of a "random person on Twitter." He's the CEO, and one of the richest men on Earth to boot.
I don't have any particular need (or interest) in knowing where Elon Musk is. I also don't know where he is at all times with the information in this flight tracker: I only know the parts that are already necessarily public.
Law is fundamentally casuistical in nature: there are standards that apply to John Q. Publics (like you and me), and there are other standards that apply to the Barbara Streisands (and Elon Musks) of the world.
So is your license plate number, and you have no reasonable expectation of the privacy of that information... but you wouldn't be happy if someone went around tracking everywhere you went now would you?
Relitigating this is not going to be fruitful: Elon Musk is a public figure who chooses to fly by private jet. Callsigns and flight status are public information by necessity.
Being a public figure does not mean you have a right to stalk and harass him. It means you get to have a higher bar to charges of defamation for things said about them and nothing more.
Tracking an aircraft's callsign does not remotely approach the bar for "stalking and harassing."
Put another way: the courts have overwhelmingly recognized the rights of "paparazzi": if you're a public figure, there is going to be independent public interest in your life.
The interest can't be intrusive (meaning that it doesn't enable someone to break into your house and take pictures of your underwear drawer), but it does allow citizens to use any public information available to them. Since airplane information is public by necessity, there is no reasonable legal structure that enhances Musk's privacy without compromising well-trodden expression rights.
Not that I think it should be banned (I don't think it should)
I think it's also obvious that this jet tracker doesn't exactly aid in the public discourse, it seems far closer to targeted harassment..
Again, I don't think anything should be banned outside of direct threats (I'm a free speech absolutist). But it does seem clear, even from that tweet by Musk, that that twitter account seemed to impact his personal safety.
Oh no, a billionaire felt bullied because someone posted public flight tracking data on social media? That’s nowhere near the bar for “targeted harassment”. You know what is? That same billionaire has been calling people pedophiles in a targeted attempt at character assassination.
Yeah a friend of mine has the same issue. Said he got a notification his account was suspended and when he tried to appeal the decision he just gets an error.
His profile comes up with 'User not found' when I checked it. Very strange.
They have marketed this by saying they will be working 80% of the hours they use to work yet they want their employees to travel to the office? Surely the hours they've cut for their employees will now be lost travelling to the office and back instead?
I'd rather work a 5 day week if I could work from home then a 4 day work week and have to travel to the office
Yeah that surprised me too. Surely if they are able to get the same job done while working from home that would be the better option for everyone involved no?
As some employees may lose like an hour a day just to travel whereas that hour could be spent working on features etc. if they didn't have to travel into the office.
