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I don’t even think it was particularly about his personal safety. So someone gets a notification he has landed in Miami - are they going to race to the airport, hop the fence, run to his plane and confront him?

I genuinely think he just found it irritating that someone was trying to make him look bad. I don’t blame him, I’d probably feel the same way. But then I haven’t bought a social media platform and loudly and repeatedly proclaimed that I am a free-speech absolutist.



This is all public info from the FAA.

Unless Elon plans to ban the FAA from doing its job, people will know where Elon Musk's airplane is at all times.

Banning a silly Twitter account that copy/pastes data from the FAA won't change a thing.

The paparazzi have been using these things to follow celebrities since forever. It's an exorcise in ignorance to ignore the nature of FAA regulations / airplane tracking.


Actually it's not even information from FAA since ADS-B Exchange use information gathered by private individuals.

AFAIK all you need to gather ADS-B information for your own location is Android Phone, $30 USB dongle and some Antena.


That will only let you know when the plane is overhead, and costs 30 USD more than Twitter.


Well that’s the other thing - banning the account on Twitter doesn’t make this go away. It just means people will follow them on FB or just use flightradar24 instead.


Paging Ms. Streisand.

Ms. Barbra Streisand, on the white courtesy phone...


> It's an exorcise in ignorance to ignore the nature of FAA regulations / airplane tracking.

It may be more of an exercise of Elon flexing his $44B investment over the heaters and the poor people: by this point he knows that anyone even slightly left of center is not going to love him, so he's full on embracing the far/alt right crowd by "owning the libs". "Free speech" is lip service at max that some people fell for hook, line, and sinker.


Exactly. A thread on Twitter about his Jets wouldn't touch his personal safety since the data is public, but it would attract more among the people who don't like him, therefore he would be giving exposure to discussions against his public image.

He has all rights to ban whoever he wishes since he owns the platform, but common sense should suggest him to stop talking about free speech since he's in no position to lecture anyone on the matter.


> He has all rights to ban whoever he wishes since he owns the platform.

I'm sure stuff like antidiscrimination law etc. in several jurisdictions would make such behavior illegal.


> Banning a silly Twitter account that copy/pastes data from the FAA won't change a thing.

Of course it does.

When you make something easier to do, the effect is it increases the chance of people doing it.

If your contact information is listed in a telephone book, it is publicly accessible information. Anyone can look that up. But who's going to do that? (to prank call you for example). But if some posts your info to a twitter account that reaches millions, chances are someone's going to call you. Why? Because popped up in millions of peoples' twitter feeds. And since it's so low effort, one or more people with nothing better to do will call.


That might be true for most instances of "you", but if you are Elon Musk, people will find your phone number in the telephone book anyway.


> So someone gets a notification he has landed in Miami - are they going to race to the airport, hop the fence, run to his plane and confront him?

Even if congress shutdown ADS-B receiving or encrypting it somehow, people would just get out the long range camera lenses and take pictures of the tail numbers as the planes land and report it on a web site.


ADS-B is used all over the world, the trend is actually in the opposite direction: more and more airspace requires the use of ADS-B. Encrypting it would defeat the purpose of allowing airplanes to see each other as well (ADS-B to some extent replaces radar).

Congress could presumably pass some law but it would have to be ICAO or some other global organization that would formalize the change. Updating the systems on all aircraft would take many years. The current roll-out has been in progress for more than a decade.


His son X got threatened. Someone blocked the car and jumped on the hood. That's why they made this rule so suddenly.


Definitely believe this self-justifying story made up on the spot by a notoriously inveterate liar.



ok, understandable. so he understands posts can potentially impact safety in the real world.

so why does he actively mock some people or groups and make them seem unreasonable when they ask for twitter to help with their safety?

do only billionaires get help from twitter now?


Because we're all just extras in Elon's life story. Why should he care when the token black guy gets eaten by a shark?


So people were tweeting real time location of Elon's son? Or just Elon's jet?

People get threatened by random weirdos all the time.


... imagine all those crazy Elon stalkers base-jumping on his flying plane's roof!




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