So, he basically gave tips on how to use molotov cocktails, and responded "You're goddamn right I am" to someone who accused him of supporting criminals.
Ok, so this is politic, and had nothing to do with the reporting of twitter data being available on the dark web.
This is not exactly free speech issue, because Twitter does not ban based on political preferences/opinions.
This is dishonest competition (all other major companies do the same but not as blunt: Facebook, Google, Amazon for example). Twitter could be an exception. But it won't.
> because Twitter does not ban based on political preferences/opinions.
Because the journalists Musk banned were definitely not banned for their opinions on Musk?
I'm going to preempt the 'harassment' argument--the photo Musk posted, when he was claiming that the journalists caused him to be stalked, was found to have been taken an hour after Musk's jet took off and nowhere near any airport.
One of the journalist didn't even talked about Elonjet, but posted an article about Tesla with data from an insider btw. This claim just fell apart for me when I learned that, do you still believe it's true?
Taylor Lorenz was suspended for “prior doxxing” (i.e. before the policy change, and why now?) immediately after asking Musk for comment on a story about his allegation that @elonjet was responsible for a stalking incident.
It's at the very least Musk's explanation. Lorenz's tweet with her offsite links predates the new policy; if they're related, the policy was a retroactive explanation similar to how they made up the "no real-time location" policy after banning @elonjet.
I think it was this: she tagged Elon (and emailed him), so he went looking at her account. Found some older posts and reported them (maybe his assistant did that).
And the account was banned until the links are removed by the account owner (this is how twitter deals with such posts).
Taylor Lorenz did enough harm already, for example, revealing identity of libsoftiktok was inappropriate, she is a bad person.
I don't think that anything prior to rule introduction should stay forever. If she was forced to delete it, that's fine.
I guess she got banned for reminding musk about the time he doxxed her for reporting on Tesla.
They are other examples.
And the question isn't if it's true or not. The question was: what would make you change your mind about EM. To me, it was the pedo accusations about a rescuer who refused his 'help'. I then found videos about how fake and dumb the Hyperloop was, and I was done with him.
I change my mind constantly when I get more information. But my opinion of Musk is not polar either absolute evil and absolute good. When he does something good, I give him a point, when he makes a mistake, I subtract a point.
So far Elon was net positive for Twitter.
Hyperloop, I don't think this is a big deal. Musk has thousands ideas, not all of them work.
I don't care about pedo story. It was inappropriate for sure, but everyone can make mistakes. Who is without sin... I prefer people who make mistakes openly to people who know how signal virtue.
In the end, for me, it is important what you do, and not as much, what you say.
I think this article explained well that she in fact wasn't tweeting about Elonjet but about the time he doxxed an ex-employeur.
I remember it was before the idiotic pedophilia accusations, he retweeted someone who doxxed her email address after tweeting about her like 5 times in a row, i thought 'wow, not cool'.
Here what I found [0]: "This is worse than just stalking: Musk is setting his army of fanboys loose on Lopez, he’s retweeting stuff they find, and he’s encouraging them every step of the way. Milo Yiannopoulos was banned from Twitter for setting mobs upon his enemies; Musk should be banned too, but won’t be."
Maybe he did something else, and that is bad, but let's not move goalposts.
> he retweeted someone who doxxed her email address
"Doxxing" for revealing email address a bit exaggeration. This is also bad, but doxxing usually means revealing something which may give people significant distress. Like home address.
Also if there's a screenshot of such tweet. Since it seems to be disappeared from the internet, probably nobody really cared.
> Musk is setting his army of fanboys loose on Lopez
This is journalistic exaggeration. There's no proof of that in the article. Mentioning someone in Twitter does not mean he intentionally sets "his army of fanboys".
> all other major companies do the same but not as blunt: Facebook, Google, Amazon for example
I do not think this is true. At least not in this scale.
You can post on FB about Twitter or Mastodon. You can search on Google about DuckDuckGo[0] or OpenStreetMap and so on.
[0] Even first suggestion for me when I enter the 'd' char.
Because people do not threaten FB to leave to Mastodon. But you can't link (maybe you can now, but some time ago you couldn't) to Telegram inside Whatsapp, because Facebook considered Telegram a competitor.
> You can search on Google about DuckDuckGo
Again, because Google does not consider DDG a competitor.
But a while ago (long before the war when everybody were at peace), Russia was the only country where Google Chrome did not offer the choice of search engine. Because Russia was the only country where Google was not the leading search engine. There's famous commit in Chromium repository which explicitly excludes Russia.
> This is not exactly free speech issue, because Twitter does not ban based on political preferences/opinions.
Freedom of speech encompasses far more than just "political preferences/opinions".
> This is dishonest competition (all other major companies do the same but not as blunt: Facebook, Google, Amazon for example).
1. I know of exactly zero other social media platforms that ban the mere mention of other social media platforms.
2. Precisely none of those companies are owned entirely by individuals claiming to be "free speech absolutists".
3. Mastodon is not a company, major or otherwise. It's a "competitor" to Twitter in the same sense that me raising chickens in my backyard makes me a "competitor" to Tyson or Foster Farms.
> I know of exactly zero other social media platforms that ban the mere mention of other social media platforms
WhatsApp banned links to Telegram.
Facebook ranks links to Twitter/YouTube lower than content without such links.
> Precisely none of those companies are owned entirely by individuals claiming to be "free speech absolutists"
Either Elon Musk is no longer "free speech absolutist" or does not consider Twitter policy must match his personal preferences.
> Mastodon is not a company, major or otherwise
Competition may be not only for money, but also competition for users. It is quite possible that critical number of users will leave Twitter for Mastodon.
> Facebook ranks links to Twitter/YouTube lower than content without such links.
Right, links, not "mere mentions".
> Either Elon Musk is no longer "free speech absolutist" or does not consider Twitter policy must match his personal preferences.
Very likely the former - or more accurately, he wasn't ever a "free speech absolutist" in the first place, but dishonestly claimed to be one. The latter is obviously a possibility, though it would go against the whole ostensible point of him buying Twitter in the first place.
> It is quite possible that critical number of users will leave Twitter for Mastodon.
It is also quite possible that a critical number of chicken eaters will stop buying frozen chicken strips in favor of raising chickens themselves or getting chicken meat from neighbors who do so. That doesn't make backyard chicken farmers Tyson/Foster competitors in any meaningful sense.
I must say, VPS_Report is an evil person. I don't know if he deserves his right to speech after he posted his threats, but I won't miss him on Twitter.
Andy Ngo is fine. You may disagree with him, but he only does journalist work.
I thought @chadloder was a really insightful account with tons of resources for Osint and infosec.
I don't get why it's banned, is it because he found some jan6 protestors who weren't caught by the police yet with his tools?
And, I mean, crimethinc, really? You cannot do mellower on the anarchist side. I don't think they even defend the second amendment. It's clearly political.
chadloder seems like a decent person. I'd like to know what Elon or Twitter has on him.
Musk promised that everyone will get explanation why they were banned. I'm waiting for it.
> It's clearly political.
It may be personal, but I doubt it is political. It just happens that people who attack Elon are on the left, and people who were banned by previous administration and unbanned now are on the right, so it looks political.
Of course, Twitter moderation should not be based on personal preferences of Elon.
You are correct in that this is not a free speech issue. Private organizations can control what is said on their platform.
You are 100% incorrect in that free speech is not, has never been, and will never be limited to political preferences/opinions.
Commercial, frivolous, inconsequential, satirical, and all other forms of free and independent thought are "speech".
"Drink more Ovaltine" is speech the same way "slavery is bad" is speech. These two disparate utterances are equally important and protected as "speech".
"I like big butts and I cannot lie" is speech as important as a treatise on political theory.
The comment you replied to lampoons Musk's "free speech absolutist" schtick. A nuance you have failed to appreciate.
What hasn't been noted here, yet, as far as I can tell, is that the EU prohibits this type of behavior (banning mentions of competitors) and it will be interesting to see how they respond. But that's an antitrust matter, not free speech.
Well, in the context of Musk's entire public premise for buying Twitter being to provide an at-scale safe haven for online free speech, it absolutely is a free speech issue.
It's very likely an antitrust issue. This is a significant policy shift meant to stifle a competitor through market dominance rather than competition. I'd be surprised if the consumer protection bureau doesn't start an investigation
> This is dishonest competition (all other major companies do the same but not as blunt: Facebook, Google, Amazon for example). Twitter could be an exception. But it won't.
During the #deletefacebook movement, Facebook didn't ban links to or discussion of competitors.
Doxxing is a common attack on people who are guilty of wrongspeak.
I have no strong opinion about how doxxing relates to free speech, but desire to hide your private life is understandable, and I don't see any benefit for the society from realtime doxxing.
Musk's definition of free speech in the past included calling his critics pedophiles and making false statements about his company's stock. Now it doesn't include publicly available information about the location of a vehicle he owns?
The mental gymnastics that folks go to excuse Musk's behavior will get ever more absurd.
Musk will continue to censor speech he doesn't like arbitrarily and use Twitter to promote right-wing extremists who will then hurt real people in the real world.
Musk has in the past and very recently supported conspiracy theories. Dr. Fauci, one of the greatest public servants we've had in this country, was accused by Musk of 'killing millions'.
Musk is a right-wing extremist who will protect his own.
Clearly nothing is stopping someone from doing that anyway, but also nobody ever knows if Elon is actually on any of the three planes tracked (unless he posts about where he's going or where he is). They're not even his personal planes, they're owned by his companies and used by other people. If he's that worried about a stalker he should just charter a jet instead of flying on jets associated with him or his companies, then nobody would know.
It’s worth noting that the tracker doesn’t post destinations until, of course, the plane actually lands. You cannot use the data provided to determine where to meet him.
It is more nuanced than that. Professional criminals won’t have trouble locating Musk, but nut job activists may be not that smart and providing them location actually increases risk for Musk.
Well, the guy on the video looked much more sophisticated than a random nut activist. They would rather go the easy way: stand in front of SpaceX and harass the employees
Tim Pool is swatted regularly for example. Tucker Carlson had to move after his home was attacked. There was an attack on Brett Kavanaugh. There’s a lot of such stories.
You don’t have to attack a jet in the airport. You can attack a car on the only road from the airport for example if you know exactly when and where to attack. (Also, not all the airports have good security, smaller airports don’t.)
> You can attack a car on the only road from the airport for example if you know exactly when and where to attack.
Was this the case with the stalker? From what I can tell the airplane landed the day before, and I haven't seen any evidence that the incident occurred near the airport.
Sony could be smart, for example keep existing price as is, but also offering “premium” version for higher price but with delivery this week. This would kill scalpers.
Nintendo did this, the Switch was out of stock consistently, unless you bought it in a "bundle". A lot of the bundles were 12 months of the Online service, so basically easy profit.
People here saying the PS5 should have dropped in price, I just checked Amazon for the price of a new Nintendo Switch (standard model, not OLED), seems almost identical to what I paid for one on launch day. £250. This is now really old hardware that launched over 5 years ago (Mar 2017).
This "standard model" had a SoC refresh too. And as said elsewhere in the thread, it's now cheaper in USD (how components are priced) than it was when GBP was at 1.30+.
PS5s are relatively easy to buy in bundles; if you're lucky you'll have a game you wanted, except at list price instead of market price, but most of the time you'll have useless overpriced accessories and average games. In fact, Sony is encouraging the practice, and makes it harder for resellers to not do this.
Very little and and what is donated likely will be spent inefficiently (as in many charities) or maybe even with negative efficiency (see greenpeace who is largely responsible for us not having cheap, green and reliable nuclear power).
I prefer to buy cheaper products and decide for myself how I should spend the price tag difference on charity, not trust clothing brand to do it for me.
(Sorry for offtopic here, original thread is closed, and I don't have your other contacts.)