Not only does it contradict his direct statement about not banning @elonjet, it contradicts his statements about twitter policy being decided by a committee, as well as his numerous other statements about allowing free speech in general.
The policy itself I think makes some sense, although it's interpretation is ripe for abuse, just posting any random picture of someone in real time could be interpreted as a violation.
> If something might be harmful to my kids, I would ignore what I said earlier and protect my kids first.
It might be, but there isn't a shred of proof that it actually is.
Elon is quite literally hiding behind his youngest child in order to get away with something that he simply wanted to do anyway. He painted himself in a corner and this is his way out.
The account that got blocked wasn't active on the day that the alleged stalking incident happened. And until I see some actual evidence that the two are linked that will be my position.
And if I were a billionaire and worried about parties tracking my vehicle in real time I would be up front about it rather than to make grand statements about absolute free speech and leaving that particular account up. I might go as far as to say that I purchased Twitter with the express intent of shutting that account down, even though I knew full well that the information would remain available elsewhere because my children's health is priceless and 44 Billion is chump change to me.
I also would not use easily identifiable vehicles such as private aircraft.
Until you see some actual evidence, Elon cannot take actions to protect his family? That is ridiculous.
Even without this incident, having a twitter tracking your real-time movement already presents danger to your family. Even you yourself wouldn't like it.
> And if I were a billionaire and worried about parties tracking my vehicle in real time I would be up front about it rather than to make grand statements about absolute free speech and leaving that particular account up.
What does this have to do with his family's safety?
Apparently, he prioritizes family's safety over being called hypocrisy. This is a good thing, right? We all agree that Elon is taking a good action, right?
It's strange that you argue the other way around. It's like you want people to not prioritize family's safety. Weird.
> I also would not use easily identifiable vehicles such as private aircraft.
Ah the victim blaming. it's not the stalker's fault. It's the victim's fault that chooses the type of the vehicle.
You ignored half of his comment which completely negates your entire spiel.
It was 'that is my position', not 'he is not allowed to protect his family', and 'if I were him and wanted to protect my family' followed by doing everything you are arguing for except the being two-faced and disingenuous about the reasoning.
Please engage with good faith or just state outright that you don't care what the other person says and state your argument without quoting them as if you are responding to what they intended instead of what allows you to make a point.
> This is a good thing, right? We all agree that Elon is taking a good action, right?
For Musk the father, if what he’s saying is true then that’s good for him.
For me the internet denizen, this is not good. Because if we are to take Musk’s premise that Twitter was run by the whims of partisans as true, it is now the case that Twitter is run by the whims of Musk. This is not what he promised when he bought Twitter.
It might turn out fine if Musk has learned a tough lesson about the balance of privacy and safety on social media. Maybe he learned that “free speech absolutism” is a fantasy and not a tenable philosophy. If this leads to fairer, more balanced, and well thought out content moderation policies, that would be great.
But if the end result here is that we get more capricious and arbitrary policies that form to the contours of only Musk’s personal experiences, then no, that’s not good for anyone.
It seems to me that the rule at Twitter now is that Musk will take swift action to curb billionaire problems like private jet tracking, but will do nothing to curb (and even encourages) other forms of harassment like homophobia and transphobia on the platform. This is why people are so mad.
Except... Half of us have no recourse, and governments get carte blanche to violate this type of tracking anyway. Sweeney should just take it to Mastodon.
A police report would be good enough proof for me. Or a video of the alleged stalker engaging in any of the claimed activity. Not a video of someone calmly sitting in a car, recording someone recording them and saying "I'm not."
He is not allowed to take immediate actions to ensure his family's safety before filing the police report.
> Or a video of the alleged stalker engaging in any of the claimed activity. Not a video of someone calmly sitting in a car, recording someone recording them and saying "I'm not."
Yeah, I think the logistics was difficult around the incident.
You'd have to take the video all the way before you realized there was a stalker, and the stalker would have to be stupid enough to say "I'm the stalker" out loud while being recorded.
Are most the victims of stalking able to do that with the first incident? Is Elon an outlier here?
My conclusion is still valid. As of now, there is no way to satisfy your ridiculous criteria.
>He is not allowed to take immediate actions to ensure his family's safety without filing the police report first.
I never said anything remotely like that. A video of someone in a car is not proof of his claims.
>Are most the victims of stalking able to do that with the first incident?
No, but if they end up filming the alleged stalker's license plate I'd assume they do immediately contact the police. That's not a ridiculous criteria.
Changing ones views is fine, I would hope that we all update our views as we get a little older and wiser, but his whole raison d'être for the twitter acquisition was the pursuit of free speech.
He made a bunch of very recent, very public, and very direct commitments to that effect, and now he is backtracking on it.
It's absolutely something that he should reconcile with and address.
> He backtracks it because he prioritizes his family's safety. Is that a bad thing in your view?
It's bad that he's seemingly only interested in protecting his own. The moderation he decried as part of the Twitter takeover is often the sort of thing that's protecting others from harms of this nature.
If this helps him turn over a new leaf on the concept of "legal speech can still be dangerous to people and some of it shouldn't be on Twitter", great. I'll believe it if I see it.
> He even tweeted the new policy that tracking people in real-time is not ok.
That new policy is a hastily written ex post facto justification for the action he wanted to take. I think everyone suspects, with good reason, that it'll be inconsistently applied.
Let's not kid ourselves. All of us are mostly concerned about our own kids.
If we were concerned about other kids, we would drop everything right now and spend all of our time finding kidnapped kids instead. There are thousands of missing kids right now.
We would tell senates (or vote) to spend 10B or 50B a year of tax money finding missing kids. We would make it the top priority of the nation. We don't even do that
Musk being concerned about his own kids doesn't seem out of line.
Also, which kids are getting stalked by Musk? Maybe I missed the news
Yes, but he's not in charge of the largest megaphone on the planet, which Elon Musk has used to previously advertise his stance on the subject. To see him publicly retract that and re-state his new position rather than to have to infer it from his actions would help.
'Quietly updating your opinion' is a right reserved to those that quietly held it in the first place.
That tweet says that free speech will be limited by law. For that to be relevant to ElonJet he would have to specify which laws ElonJet broke.
People can change their opinions but if you’ve made big public statements about that opinion, spent $44 billion in part to enforce that opinion, garnered press & support for that opinion, then I’d expect that opinion to be strongly held and not dropped at the first test that affected you personally. Then if you do change opinion then you should be as equally public about it as you were previously.
No it's not. The speech didn't do squat. Some crazy did. I should be able to tweet his flight plans. If se stalker gets a daft idea, woopdie
Sue the stalker/get bodyguards.
Land of the free, home of the brave for a reason. The price of admission is living here at your own risk.
And you of course don't find promoting coups to overthrow the democratically elected government of you country to be a threat to family and kids, right? That all okay. Cool.
This is not a way to moderate Twitter or any social plattform. That‘s the pertinent point. It‘s awful governance even if his personal perspective may be understandable. But that doesn’t matter. Still makes this awful governance.
Not only does it contradict his direct statement about not banning @elonjet, it contradicts his statements about twitter policy being decided by a committee, as well as his numerous other statements about allowing free speech in general.
The policy itself I think makes some sense, although it's interpretation is ripe for abuse, just posting any random picture of someone in real time could be interpreted as a violation.