Twitter Suspends Over 25 Accounts That Track Billionaires' Private Planes

[demmiblue]

Source: NYT

Twitter on Wednesday suspended more than 25 accounts that track the planes of government agencies, billionaires and high-profile individuals — including one that followed the movements of the social media company’s owner, Elon Musk, who has said he was committed to “free speech.”

Jack Sweeney, a 20-year-old college student and flight tracking enthusiast, said he woke up on Wednesday to find that his automated Twitter account, @ElonJet, had been suspended. In recent months, the account amassed more than 500,000 followers by using public flight information and data to post the whereabouts of Mr. Musk’s private plane.

Mr. Musk had been aware of @ElonJet for months. After buying Twitter for $44 billion in October, he said that he would allow the account to remain on the platform. “My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk,” 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
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 7, 2022

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/14/technology/twitter-suspends-over-25-accounts-that-track-billionaires-private-planes.html

[Major Nikon]

1. Fortunately they aren't the only game in town

Elonmuskjet on IG: https://instagram.com/elonmusksjet
On mastodon now: https://mastodon.social/@elonjet
Link tree: https://grndcntrl.net/links/

[Gore1FL]

5. That Barbara Streisand-ed nicely. nt

[riversedge]

7. Thanks for the links

[Warpy]

10. Mastondon is unabashedly geeky with a liberal bias

Plane spotters should find a home there.

[catbyte]

2. He's gotta protect the oligarchs.

[womanofthehills]

18. And his toddler son X - a person attacked car his baby was in

Link to tweet

?s=46&t=Zjqs1mMSM8IkC2Sw4nDgWQ

[NullTuples]

24. At this point, I don't believe anything he says. Maybe that happened, maybe not.

Like Trump, he says a lot of things that turn out to not be true. But they felt right in the moment.

The biggest problem I have with his story is that at an amount of wealth several levels below him, kids aren't simply driven around by a caretaker as they are targets for kidnapping and ransom. Then again judging by the way he treated his daughter - the one who wants nothing to do with him - and how he uses his platform to attack her even now...maybe he doesn't care if someone steals his child and tries to demand a ransom.

[womanofthehills]

31. Looking for this person

Link to tweet

?s=46&t=r3bwD5YS2GXY-qKBlr1g3A

[Takket]

25. Is that retroactive?

Curious if he will ban Boebert for tweeting Pelosi’s location on Jan 6th.

[oldsoftie]

3. Free speech for ME but not for THEE!

Big baby.

[womanofthehills]

19. I think he's right to not post where people are in real time

The car his toddler little X was in was attacked.

[NullTuples]

23. It's a little different with oligarchs and their private jets.

[oldsoftie]

28. How does that have anything to do with flight data?

And is there a police report on that attack?
I can only find a report from HIM

And while yes, it IS his right to block those accounts, his whole mantra buying twitter was "anything goes"

[Augiedog]

4. At the rate Twitter and Tesla are going, he will be hitchhiking soon

[rubbersole]

6. Or maybe hitch a ride on one of his rockets.

And don't come back.

[Evolve Dammit]

8. Ah, the oligarch protection from the oligarch media mogul. Fuck all of you.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

9. Musk promised not to do this

Link to tweet

[Yonnie3]

11. elonjet is reinstated and then gone again

Last edited Wed Dec 14, 2022, 09:02 PM - Edit history (1)

On edit: Oh well. I should have gotten a screen shot

Link to tweet

[womanofthehills]

20. It's gone because the car his toddler was in was attacked

And he is going to court.

[Yonnie3]

21. do tell

he sounds totally rational

not!

[Lars39]

29. Sweeney has a case if he was clearly not involved

in the car incident.
Tracking oligarchs’ jets movements is legal because the info is public knowledge.

[NCjack]

12. The "Genius" continues to drive TSLA's stock price down.

The is still time to get in some puts before he finds the low price.

[sakabatou]

13. *gasp* Muskrat being a hypocrite? Who could've guessed?!

[cstanleytech]

15. Yup. The funny thing is none of the flight information was illegal to possess or post.

[cstanleytech]

14. His commitment lasted alot longer than I thought it would.

[Bo Zarts]

16. What is Musk's jet's N number?

Anyone know?

[Major Nikon]

27. N628TS

That’s one of them. I suspect he has more than just the one at his disposal. Twitter and Tesla probably have their own flight departments with fleets of planes.

[Bo Zarts]

32. Thanks Major!

[LetMyPeopleVote]

17. Musk bans Twitter account tracking his jet, threatens to sue creator

Musk is an asshole who does not believe in free speech if such speech is about him

Link to tweet

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/12/14/elonjet-twitter-suspension-jack-sweeney-talks/

Jack Sweeney, a sophomore at the University of Central Florida, was a big fan of the billionaire industrialist Elon Musk. In 2020, Sweeney launched a Twitter account, @ElonJet, that used public air-travel data to map the flights of Musk’s private jet, thinking it’d be cool to track how Musk managed his business empire......

But Wednesday evening, Musk threatened to escalate the conflict against Sweeney, saying a car carrying Musk’s son, X Æ A-12, had been “followed by [a] crazy stalker” in Los Angeles, implying without providing evidence that location data had been a factor in the purported episode. “Legal action is being taken against Sweeney & organizations who supported harm to my family,” Musk tweeted.

Sweeney, 20, shared publicly available information about Musk’s flights, not his family members or his cars. The records stopped and ended at airports, and Musk has provided no further detail as to what legal basis Musk would cite in a lawsuit......

By Wednesday, an update appeared on Twitter’s private information and media policy that appeared to explicitly prohibit the type of activity conducted by Sweeney’s accounts. The new policy outlawed the sharing of “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.”

The Wayback Machine, an internet archive, showed that the page was updated sometime within the last day. In a tweet late Wednesday, Musk said, “Real-time posting of someone else’s location violates doxxing policy, but delayed posting of locations are ok.”.....

The sudden banning of the jet account, followed by its reversal as new rules were unveiled, potentially adds to the spate of rash decisions Musk has made since taking over Twitter. Musk fired Twitter’s top executives upon arriving, conducted steep layoffs that cut the staff in half and issued an ultimatum to workers to commit to an “extremely hardcore” Twitter or accept a severance package.

[Shipwack]

30. Is he suing Sweeney because he's worried about his safety,

Or is this a "nuisance" suit devised to make Sweeney's life miserable?

A lawsuit is effectively free for Musk. He needs to spend almost no time and a comparatively negligible amount of money, even if the case is frivolous or outright false.

For Sweeney, he probably can’t afford to lawyer up, travel to the court venue, or even take the time off work/school.

The Suicide Girls modeling group did this with great success to ruin the lives of photographers rival photographers. They claimed to own a "trademark" on the concept of taking pictures of women with tattoos, and sued any photographer that took pictures of models they had blacklisted...

[Martin68]

22. Elon umasked. Twitter is now officially a pro-billionaire, antidemocratic, fascist, racist,

antisemitic forum. Who knew? Well, just about every woke individual on the planet.