patrick.net

Twitter has suspended an account that used publicly available flight data to track Elon Musk's private jet, despite a pledge by the social media platform's new owner to keep it up because of his free speech principles.

Tweets from the widely followed @elonjet account were no longer viewable Wednesday. The account had more than 526,000 followers as of Tuesday.

“He said this is free speech and he’s doing the opposite,” said Jack Sweeney, the 20-year-old college sophomore and programmer who started the flight-tracking account, in an interview with The Associated Press.

Started in 2020 when Sweeney was a teenager, the account automatically posted the Gulfstream jet’s flights with a map and an estimate of the amount of jet fuel and carbon emissions it expended.

Sweeney said he woke up Wednesday to a flood of messages from people who saw that @elonjet was suspended and all its tweets had disappeared. He logged into Twitter and saw a notice that the account was permanently suspended for breaking Twitter's rules. But the note didn't explain which rules were broken.

“I haven't heard anything else, sadly,” said Sweeney, who said he has already filed an online form to appeal the suspension.

The University of Central Florida student said Musk last year sent him a private message offering $5,000 to take it down, citing security concerns. Musk later stopped communicating to Sweeney, who never deleted the account. Their exchange was first reported by tech news outlet Protocol earlier this year.

But after buying Twitter for $44 billion in late October, Musk said he would let it stay.

“My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk,” Musk tweeted on Nov. 6.

Sweeney runs similar “bot” accounts tracking other celebrities' airplanes. His accounts tracking private jets used by Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and various Russian oligarchs were still on Twitter on Wednesday, as were his accounts tracking Musk’s jet on rival social platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.

Twitter didn't respond to a request for comment.

Sweeney had days earlier accused Musk's Twitter of using a filtering technique to hide his tweets, and revealed what he said were leaked internal communications showing a Twitter content-moderation executive in charge of the Trust and Safety division ordering her team to suppress the account's reach. The Associated Press has not been able to independently verify those documents.

Sweeney said that he suspects that he was banned because of anger over those leaks.

Musk has previously criticized that filtering technique — nicknamed “shadowbanning” — and alleged that it was unfairly used by Twitter's past leadership to suppress right-wing accounts. He has said the new Twitter will continue to downgrade the reach of negative or hateful messages but will be more transparent about it.

In his push to loosen Twitter's content restrictions, he's reinstated other high-profile accounts that were permanently banned for breaking Twitter's rules against hateful conduct, harmful misinformation or incitements of violence.

Sweeney said he originally started the Musk jet tracker because “I was interested in him as a fan of Tesla and SpaceX."

In the weeks since the Tesla CEO took over Twitter, the @elonjet account has chronicled Musk's many cross-country journeys from his home base near Tesla's headquarters in Austin, Texas, to various California airports for his work at Twitter's San Francisco headquarters and his rocket company SpaceX.

It showed Musk flying to East Coast cities ahead of major events, and to New Orleans shortly before a Dec. 3 meeting there with French President Emmanuel Macron.

In a January post pinned to the top of the jet-tracking account's feed before it was suspended, Sweeney wrote that it “has every right to post jet whereabouts” because the data is public and “every aircraft in the world is required to have a transponder,” including Air Force One that transports the U.S. president.

Twitter has suspended an account that used publicly available flight data to track Elon Musk's private jet, despite a pledge by the social media platform's new owner to keep it up because of his free speech principles.

Managers have become alarmingly distanced from the average worker, making calls based on guesses that aren't informed by actual labor. This frustrating separation has poisoned most of modern management, creating a class system within organizations where a bloated sect of detached traffic cops extract labor without participating in or properly valuing it.

Hugh_Mongous says

Twitter has suspended an account that used publicly available flight data to track Elon Musk's private jet, despite a pledge by the social media platform's new owner to keep it up because of his free speech principles.

Boo fucking ho on these communist censors.

They called releasing legally obtained internal communications owned by the company who literally owns those messages to be some kind of Fascist Doxing, because it showed members of the company were colluding with the government to censor people.

Now they're whinging because they can't "Track Elon's Plane", just like they tried to assert doxxing Libs of TIk Tok and SCOTUS in their homes was just "Free Speech" in the knowing hopes that somebody would assassinate them.

As the new owner of Twitter, Elon Musk is, to quote, Ben Shapiro, moving fast and breaking things. He could see a big problem, as anyone outside the media feedback loop can. Twitter had become not just the propaganda arm of the State, but was being used as a filter to dodge the First Amendment, to police thought and speech.

They didn’t do it directly or overtly. They did it alongside enthusiastic “good soldiers” for the State. The users - the blue-checks - and the employees saw themselves as the #resistance. To them, banning Trump was spiking their flag at Iwo Jima. They won, or so they thought.

After the latest dump of the Twitter Files was released by Bari Weiss, showing a clear connection between the FBI and Twitter in their efforts to both suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story, and to censor and ultimately ban a sitting president, it was clear that the former management of Twitter, and its former owner, were on the ropes. This was the biggest tech story in 10 years, and the media went dark. Why? They’re the dogs that aren’t barking, that’s why. They were complicit in everything that happened on Twitter because they ARE Twitter.

Without Twitter, there can be no “cancel culture.” It is their Roman coliseum, their panopticon for surveillance, and yes, it’s their Ministry of Love, their Ministry of Truth, and their Ministry of Peace. Without Twitter, they’re just a bunch of do-nothings, drunk on their own power as they pull the lever for the dopamine hit like slot machine junkies at 2 am in Vegas. Someday, all of this will be embarrassing for all concerned. ...

Those who participated in silencing dissent and the suppression of facts should start preparing now because the internet is written in ink. There will be a reckoning on those who stood by and did nothing, and the weakest among us will be called upon to explain themselves. And what will they say? That they helped get Trump banned from Twitter? That they destroyed Space-X and Tesla? I think they better come up with something much better than that.

Patrick says

What if the people of Canada want to track Elon's jet? Will they be muzzled?

Principles are principles. If somebody condones violating free speach for one reason it doesn't mean I have to
like it violated for another. Elon promised not to do that shit anymore, didnt he? WTF?

Principles are principles

AmericanKulak says

Principles are principles

“Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them…well, I have others.”

G. Marx.

Looks like Elon may be reading up on Groucho

I'm just happy he doesn't allow child porn on the site anymore

richwicks says

I'm just happy he doesn't allow child porn on the site anymore

Anybody here personally seen any of that on twatter?

Eric Holder says

richwicks says

I'm just happy he doesn't allow child porn on the site anymore

Anybody here personally seen any of that on twatter?

That's now how it worked, as I understand it. Basically Twitter was being used to allow groups to form through various hashtags.

And? Did or did they not post the stuff?

Yoel Roth is almost certainly a pedophile, certainly a fucking asshole.

richwicks says

Yoel Roth is almost certainly a pedophile, certainly a fucking asshole.

Yes, no doubt his asshole has been fucked many times.

HeadSet says

richwicks says

Yoel Roth is almost certainly a pedophile, certainly a fucking asshole.

Yes, no doubt his asshole has been fucked many times.

I suspect his career is at an end. The dirt that is going to be uncovered on that motherfucker I think is just beginning.