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Musk restores Twitter accounts of journalists after suspensions draw backlash

28 Comments
By Sheila Dang

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"The suspensions stemmed from a disagreement over a Twitter account called ElonJet, which tracked Musk's private plane using publicly available information"

Publicly available information?

Nothing could be further from the truth. Musk flight digital pin number was hacked by an Instagrammer, his flight information posted on Mastodon and retreated by these so called "journalists"

Article fails to mention that "doxing" is a violation of twitter's TOS. This rule was established long before Musk's takeover of the platform.

-14 ( +4 / -18 )

Funny, the woke mob were always quite happy with accounts being banned or shadow-banned when it was people they didn't like - it was them who set the precedent.

Now the boots on the other foot, suddenly they are all horrified. My message to them would be "it's a private company - they can run it how they like. If you don't like it, make your own Twitter."

-14 ( +4 / -18 )

It's actually NOT public information, because Musk, as many celebrities and other people of means have done, specifically asked the FAA to issue his flight an anonymous PIN and this person ACKNOWLEDGES he cracked the code and marked the flights AFTER Musk was approved that PIN.

-7 ( +4 / -11 )

So why was his location news worthy on this occasion?, as I doubt all the journalist decided that it was news worthy?

Or was it likely a mass shadow ban for pass unnamed occasions with a "if ya dox, it's a ban". Tweet. So it wasn't exactly a particular hack? If it was a hack then they shoulda gotten it fixed.

-6 ( +0 / -6 )

So much for Musk's dedication to 'free speech'.

7 ( +11 / -4 )

Nobody doxxed St. Elon, and yes, this is publicly available information. As long as transponders are on (they have to be for any non-military aircraft), the plane is track able on a variety of public websites.

No, this was a thin-skinned egomaniac who got his britches in a bind.

And when the reporters pushed back and threatened to pull their content, that would have been it for Twitter.

So he created a bogus poll as a way out (as opposed to, you know, actually managing).

Heard of elf on the shelf? Soon has created Twitter in the...... You get the idea.

6 ( +9 / -3 )

All over the shop. What a monumental screw up.

2 ( +5 / -3 )

Please realize that not the whole world operates under US-American discourse rules where it's always one side against the other in a zero-sum game. The countermeasure to silencing one side is not to silence the other side, it's to stop silencing anyone -- something Elon as a self-proclaimed "free speech absolutionist" professed to, but clearly doesn't believe in himself

yeah, you are probably right. But he has re-instated those accounts now - I think he only did it to kind of say “see how you like it” kind of thing.

-2 ( +3 / -5 )

The First Amendment starts with...

Congress shall make no law...

not..

Congress shall force private companies to amplify and broadcast the speech of antifa and other unsavoury characters

You apparently misunderstand the first amendment, congress and twitter.

But of course, it’s all a cunning ploy to generate discussion.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

Bronco,you cannot say the 4 words on terrestrial broadcast,it also say you have to have to money to defend your right,which is not free

-7 ( +0 / -7 )

Musk is playing many stupid and unnecessary games. Reporters were locked out and are now back again. EU warned red lines and sanctions.

6 ( +7 / -1 )

I find the whole thing hilarious.

The EU is threatening twitter over privacy, possible hate speech note possible! Celebrities complain about twitter being used by fans and paparazzi to track them, people complain about bots .

But the second Musk owned twitter shuts down tracking bots and make no mistake these are 100% bot powered accounts, no human is inputting the information these are spiders that collect the information and a program uploads it to the account.

But then go to a site like CBC News comment, incert the words native, Asian, Asia, China, Japan, Africa Jewish, and a whole host of words and if it get by the moderation it will be a few hours after commenting and way down that no one will see it.

The same on nearly every European site.

So if that is what they all like I guess they will force twitter to do the same

-4 ( +1 / -5 )

St. Elon took on 13 billion in debt when he bought Twitter. The interest payments alone represent about 1 Billion a year. Twitter wasn’t throwing off 1 billion in free cash flow a year before 1/2 of its top 100 advertisers quit spending, so it sure as hell isn’t generating enough cash to pay off its debts now.

(Elon is in a sufficient bind that he is diluting his Tesla stock and putting the much-reduced proceeds in Twitter. He is also looking for equity capital at the original 54.20 price. Good luck with that…. It wasn’t worth that when he bought it. It sure as hell isn’t worth it now and I am not inclined to think there are that many rubes with that kind of money.)

Had the major news companies suspended their use of Twitter, traffic would have cratered and that would have been that. The rest of the advertisers would have fled other than the survival seed sellers, the gold bullion dealers and the reverse-mortgage scammers. So he had this “poll” put out to give himself an out.

He is still going to drive the company into the ground. I’m only there to watch it burn. He is a self-destructive personality drunk on power. But this will buy him a bit of time.

1 ( +3 / -2 )

It's almost as if he has no idea what he's doing.

Who couldaevaguessed?

5 ( +6 / -1 )

Great. Rich people controlling the media. Just what the world continues to not need. Musk paid $44 billion so he could silence critics and remove posts he doesn't like. Twitter should not be under the control of one person and especially not someone like Elon Musk.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

Not only is Elon going for world's biggest liar and hypocrite, now he's trying for world's biggest flip-flopper.

Just a couple months ago he was saying; "I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means."

Then this week we see him banning multiple news outlets and reporters who had the audacity to report on him truthfully.

Now he reinstates them before their 7-day suspension is up.

He's clearly shown his purchase of Twitter was a massive failure - and a huge blow to his reputation as some kind of business genius.

5 ( +6 / -1 )

Musk is to competently running Twitter as Putin is to competentlyinvading Ukraine.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

Mr. Musk has NO IDEA what FREEDOM of the press means. may be his adviser assuming he has some will lecture him after this mess.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

Anyone actually know how many quit twitter?

Well depends on who you ask but the highest number is 1.6% .

Seems a lot say they will quit few actually did.

-9 ( +2 / -11 )

Mark

Today 08:16 pm JST

Mr. Musk has NO IDEA what FREEDOM of the press means. may be his adviser assuming he has some will lecture him after this mess

You are correct.

He thinks it works like the USA where one can say what one thinks.

But in reality it in 90% of the world including Canada Australia, Europe is is you can only say what we say is Ok.

Example is the Norwegian lesbian artist tweeted that said transgender Women cannot be lesbians any more than they can get pregnant.

Now she may face 3 years in jail for saying that.

Elon Musk doesn't get that every country has a bit of a CCP speech control

-7 ( +1 / -8 )

Ah, democracy, freedom, human rights, and freedom of speech.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Consider these two scenarios:

A 20 year old woman is stalked, her movements uploaded to Twitter. Media response: Twitter is enabling stalking. The stalker's account should be blocked. Twitter should be sanctioned and overseen by the state.

Musk is stalked, his movements uploaded to Twitter. He blocks the accounts of those stalking him. Media response: Twitter is censoring the press. Twitter should be sanctioned and overseen by the state.

Thus, despite the internet, governments can still manipulate public sentiment by controlling syndicated news on mainstream outlets.

If Musk is going to act in such cases, he needs to do it for everyone. And if he doesn't like being monitored, he has lawyers and can use them.

Wealthy celebs often believe that they do not need a PR filter or agent, when they need one more than the rest of us. Especially when governments are targeting them.

1 ( +5 / -4 )

Then on Thursday evening, several journalists, including from the New York Times, CNN and the Washington Post, were suspended from Twitter with no notice.

Here “with no notice” means no one noticed the journalists were suspended because the NYT, CNN, and the WP do not hire actual journalists.

-6 ( +0 / -6 )

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