Elon's Twitter

[Eldy]

Elon Musk today called for Dr. Anthony Fauci to be prosecuted for how he supposedly mishandled the Covid-19 pandemic.

Mind you, on March 19, 2020, Musk wrote on Twitter that he believed China was telling the truth about there being no new Covid cases in that country, and he added that the U.S. would probably have zero new cases by the end of April.

On that note...

Red-Pilled Elon Musk Still Loves the Chinese Communist Party - Intelligencer (New York magazine)

The idea Musk is gesturing toward as his pretext for prosecuting Fauci is the theory that COVID-19 emerged from a laboratory leak in Wuhan. That theory is unproven but perfectly plausible. (The Biden administration’s intelligence review of the virus’s origins remains inconclusive.) The right-wing version of this idea spins off into insanity by further proposing that Fauci is to blame for faulty lab protocols in China and deserves to be in prison, an impulse that is consistent with Republicans’ mania for locking up their hate objects but totally unjustified by any normal interpretation of the law.

The key thing to understand about Fauci’s supposed criminality is that it is premised on him being an accomplice to Chinese crimes of a much higher magnitude. And when conservatives expound upon their theories about gain-of-function research, they generally link Fauci with the Chinese government, attacking both. Indeed, the whole reason Republicans are obsessed with this topic is to justify Donald Trump’s efforts to brand COVID the “China virus” and blame that country for the pandemic, absolving himself for his inept and dishonest response.

But Musk, unlike his conservative allies, does not blame China for the (potential) lab leak. The Musk version of this theory seems to imagine that Fauci funded research somewhere — Musk does not even identify the country where the lab was located — and single-handedly let the virus slip out.

You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to grasp why Musk has developed this idiosyncratically China-free version of the lab-leak theory. Tesla’s largest factory is located in China, and his car business requires cooperation from that country’s government. The Chinese Communist Party is notoriously rigid about policing the speech habits of any businesses it permits to operate.

Conservatives don’t seem to care about any of this as long as Musk is owning the libs. If you wish to credit Musk with strategic forethought, this is exactly the point: He is buying right-wing support on the cheap with some shitposting and unbanning a handful of right-wing trolls, thus neutralizing a potentially huge threat to his much larger automobile business.

If you think he’s just a red-pilled billionaire, he has wandered conveniently into a stance that makes no sense. He believes Fauci caused the pandemic by funding researchers who share none of his guilt. He thinks the “woke mind virus” might destroy civilization but that Chinese communism is an admirable model. Musk is at worst a cynical tool of authoritarianism and at best an idiot savant. Either way, the conservative celebration of his newfound persona — and total refusal to question his curious blind spot for the CCP — reveals a complete lack of principle.

[N.E. Brigand]

A previously unreleased text reveals that in May, in support of his plan to buy Twitter, Elon Musk sought and received $100 million from Sam Bankman-Fried, the now infamous CEO of the crypto-currency exchange FTX, a firm which recently filed for bankruptcy as Bankman-Fried's net worth, once estimated to be $26 billion, plummeted 94% on November 8 -- "the largest one-day drop in the [Bloomberg Billionaires] index's history" -- and has him now being assessed as having "no material wealth."

Bankman-Fried's financial advisors had subsequently proposed to Musk that Bankman-Fried would contribute anywhere from $3 billion to $10 billion to the deal. As with the many Democratic campaigns that Bankman-Fried said he would bankroll this year but didn't (something Democratic candidates were grumbling about a monthy ago but for which they now realize they should be grateful), that larger investment in Twitter didn't happen.

Semafor, the new media outlet where that story was published, disclosed in that article that they had themselves received a donation from the discgraced cryptocurrency CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. On Twitter today, Elon Musk asked Semafor's editor, Ben Smith, "What percentage of you does he own?" Naturally, Musk says nothing about Bankman-Fried having given him $100 million. That's $60 million more than Bankman-Fried gave to Democratic campaigns, and yet Musk also recently wrote two weeks ago that Bankman-Fried would escape scrutiny because: "SBF was a major donor, so no investigation."

A month ago, Elon Musk tweeted that because Sam Bankman-Fried had donated heavily to Democrats, his misdeeds would not be investigated.

Tonight, Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas after the U.S. Dept. of Justice filed charges against him for wire fraud, securities fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy.

[N.E. Brigand]

Some interesting thoughts here about how the Twitter never delivered on its promise (even before Musk) and how the internet might be better off if Twitter becomes a conservative site and its liberal users leave: "People call Twitter the 'town square,' as if the global internet is supposed to be one town. But it's not! The internet is a collection of towns. And if some towns have conservative mayors and others have liberal mayors, that is fine."

[Dave_LF]

This is true, but the internet has always been dominated by the 4chan "internazi" type, of which Musk is merely the latest, richest incarnation. In many ways he's more dangerous than classical Nazis like Putin and Trump who've learned to speak internet adequately, but not as a first language.

[Eldy]

I think that's a point worth considering. We get a lot of hand-wringing about echo chambers and people not interacting enough with those of differing beliefs—or at least we did a few years ago—and I think there's a valid point to be made there, but a barely moderated "free-for-all hellscape" (to borrow Musk's term) was not an environment that fostered meaningful or productive discourse in the comments sections of news articles 15 years ago, and I don't think the way people engage with strangers online has really changed that much. I admit, I've never been a regular on Twitter, but the fact that there's a whole running joke that the goal for Twitter users is to not become the main character of the site on any given day—i.e., to avoid being the target of mass harassment—has always seemed telling. Facebook and Reddit are certainly hellacious at times, too, but I think the fragmented nature of groups/subreddits makes it easier for good communities to flourish in the cracks. Not coincidentally, these are almost always on the small side. Then again, I'm a traditional message board grognard who likes small communities with distinctive site cultures, so I'm not exactly unbiased here.

[Frelga]

For communication and finding community, I still love message boards best. Especially this one.

But Twitter is unparalleled as a news feed. I don't engage there, and my account is private, but I not only found experts in every conceivable field of interest (and also cool art and cute animal photos to keep my blood pressure down), but through the retweets from people I followed I became exposed to viewpoints and experiences far outside my own.

I do feel for people who come there looking for engagement, because they need publicity. There is no equivalent of group or community where moderation rules can be set. Either everyone can see everything or only your followers can. Minimal and global moderation has meant that only the most blatant cases of harassment were addressed, and then sporadically and inconsistently, and then Musk made it worse.

[River]

In all seriousness, while Musk indulges in his social media addiction, Tesla is sliding. Partly because Musk's behavior is making investors nervous and partly because Tesla hasn't released any new products in a while. I wonder if Tesla's board will boot him. I wonder if it even can.

[N.E. Brigand]

Internal messages reveal that nine days ago, Twitter shadowbanned* a Twitter account that tracks Elon Musk's private jet. As noted on that account, anyone as the legal "right to post jet whereabouts, ADS-B data is public, every aircraft in the world is required to have a transponder, even Air Force One." And doing so doesn't violate Twitter's terms of service, either. Of course, Twitter is a private company with and can modify its rules at any time. But this does smell like a hypocritical move.

*What Twitter has actually done is to "apply heavy VF [visibility filtering]" to the account. Is that "shadowbanning"? By the definition of Elon Musk's journalists, it is.

And now Twitter has banned that account.

This is despite Elon Musk explicitly saying a month ago that he wouldn't ban that account.

Prior to finalizing his purchase of Twitter, Musk had offered the account holder $5,000 to shut it down. (The offer was turned down.)

And while I've been typing this, Twitter also shut down the personal account of the person who ran the Elon Musk jet tracking account.

And Twitter has shut down other accounts that tracked various billionaires' planes.

Oh, and users attempting to post images of the Instagram account that tracks Musk's plane fine that their tweets won't post.

Again, this is all public information. All these accounts did was make it more easily accessible.

So petty.

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Also, it appears that despite having urged his supporters to vote (and specifically to vote Republican) in last month's election, Elon Musk himself didn't vote.

[RoseMorninStar]

Hubby is obsessively interested in electric vehicles and specifically Tesla. He's been tracking it for years and has a small investment. He watches many of the Tesla guru's who have YouTube channels and it seems more than a few are livid that he's dragging Tesla (and his other companies) down with his erratic behavior/Twitter acquisition.

[River]

I'm pretty ticked too. He's endangering the viability of a really cool, revolutionary product for...what exactly?

[Eldy]

for...what exactly?

Feeling like he's owning the libs, probably.

[N.E. Brigand]

Internal messages reveal that nine days ago, Twitter shadowbanned* a Twitter account that tracks Elon Musk's private jet. As noted on that account, anyone as the legal "right to post jet whereabouts, ADS-B data is public, every aircraft in the world is required to have a transponder, even Air Force One." And doing so doesn't violate Twitter's terms of service, either. Of course, Twitter is a private company with and can modify its rules at any time. But this does smell like a hypocritical move.

*What Twitter has actually done is to "apply heavy VF [visibility filtering]" to the account. Is that "shadowbanning"? By the definition of Elon Musk's journalists, it is.

And now Twitter has banned that account.

This is despite Elon Musk explicitly saying a month ago that he wouldn't ban that account.

Prior to finalizing his purchase of Twitter, Musk had offered the account holder $5,000 to shut it down. (The offer was turned down.)

And while I've been typing this, Twitter also shut down the personal account of the person who ran the Elon Musk jet tracking account.

And Twitter has shut down other accounts that tracked various billionaires' planes.

Oh, and users attempting to post images of the Instagram account that tracks Musk's plane fine that their tweets won't post.

Again, this is all public information. All these accounts did was make it more easily accessible.

So petty.

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Also, it appears that despite having urged his supporters to vote (and specifically to vote Republican) in last month's election, Elon Musk himself didn't vote.

This evening, hours after banning all those accounts, Twitter issued an ex post facto justification in the form of a policy change: users are no longer allowed to share the "actual physical location" of someone in real time, even if that information is publicly available.

In other words, it would violate Twitter's rules if a user posted "Elon Musk is currently in the United States."

Edited to add: Ironically, it was reported earlier this week that Twitter was "considering forcing users to share their location".

[RoseMorninStar]

Not to mention Musk has put the target on the backs of others.. like Dr. Fauci.

[N.E. Brigand]

The culling has begun. Over the past half hour, NBC's Ben Collins notes (on Twitter, for now) that:

Journalists who cover Elon Musk have been suspended on Twitter tonight: Donie O'Sullivan from CNN, Aaron Rupar and the Washington Post's Drew Harwell.

Rupar tells me he has "no idea" why it happened.

The New York Times' Ryan Mac has been suspended from Twitter. He's been on the Elon Musk beat.

Mashable's Matt Binder has been suspended from Twitter. He's been on the Elon Musk beat.

Journalist Tony Webster has been suspended.

[N.E. Brigand]

The culling has begun. Over the past half hour, NBC's Ben Collins notes (on Twitter, for now) that:

Journalists who cover Elon Musk have been suspended on Twitter tonight: Donie O'Sullivan from CNN, Aaron Rupar and the Washington Post's Drew Harwell.

Rupar tells me he has "no idea" why it happened.

The New York Times' Ryan Mac has been suspended from Twitter. He's been on the Elon Musk beat.

Mashable's Matt Binder has been suspended from Twitter. He's been on the Elon Musk beat.

Journalist Tony Webster has been suspended.

CNN's O'Sullivan was apparently suspended because he reported on Elon Musk's claim that one of his children was dangerously stalked in Los Angeles yesterday because a Twitter account shared the location of Musk's private jet (information which is publicly available because the air belongs to the public and air traffic information is managed by a publicly-funded federal office), which (pretextually, or should I say post-textually) led to Twitter instituting a new policy forbidding the real-time sharing of people's locations. O'Sullivan reported that the Los Angeles police were aware of Musk's public claim and were investigating but that no police report had been filed.

Meanwhile, two more journalists have had their Twitter accounts suspended: Micah Flee of the Intercept, and the commentator Keith Olbermann.

Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall describes this evening's vibe in terms of the 1997 film Boogie Nights:



Musk's pet journalists, Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss, have yet to say anything about multiple other journalists having their accounts suspended tonight for doing their jobs.

(Edited on Dec. 16 to add this link for easy reference. In that post, the man who ran the ElonJet account explains why, despite Musk's claims today to the contrary, his flight data really is public information.)

[Frelga]

If you have a bit of time on your hands, Elon is running a poll for reinstating the plane tracking accounts.

Re-running, I should say. "Unban now" won the first poll so he's running another one.

[Inanna]

Publicly accessible and publicly disseminated are two different things. In today’s environment posting locations should not be encouraged.

[RoseMorninStar]

Publicly accessible and publicly disseminated are two different things. In today’s environment posting locations should not be encouraged.

I was wondering about this and I pondered it from both sides. Tracking their plane (or car, etc..) is not something I'd do/be interested in. That said, people post all kinds of stories about politicians/celebrities and their carbon footprint/their flights. I would imagine even more so for the owner of Tesla who claims to be in the business of reducing carbon footprints. Has Elon only forbidden those who track him/his plane .. or across the board?

The news in general has always featured the location of those who are in the public eye or who are famous. With the advent of instant communication and social media, increasingly in real time. It's part of what news stories are. It's an ethical question/dilemma.

In today's environment a lot of things shouldn't be posted.. but they are. Musk himself has put a target on the back of many people (thinking of Dr. Fauci).

[N.E. Brigand]

If you have a bit of time on your hands, Elon is running a poll for reinstating the plane tracking accounts.

Re-running, I should say. "Unban now" won the first poll so he's running another one.

And of course the poll itself is disseminating a lie: the journalists who were banned had not, as Elon Musk claimed, "doxxed [his] exact location in real time." At most, they referenced Musk's prior location by reporting on the controversy as they pointed out some holes in the tale that Musk was telling.

And also, in the course of complaining about doxxing this week, Musk himself doxxed someone (at least as Twitter currently defines such behavior).
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Publicly accessible and publicly disseminated are two different things. In today’s environment posting locations should not be encouraged.

A lot of people have been pointing out that for the majority of the time that many of us have been alive, there was this thick white book that was delivered annually to nearly every U.S. household that listed the name, address, and phone number of almost all the people who lived in the region in which that household was located. However, there were exceptions: if you paid a fee, you could prevent your information from being listed. And it's true that modern technology makes such public information readily available to a much larger audience, and also that social media makes it much easier to rile up a crowd to put someone in danger if their location is known. For example, Elon Musk's "Twitter files" project, by falsely presenting Yoel Roth as a villain who supposedly change the course of the 2020 election, riled up Donald Trump's supporters leading to Roth fleeing his home to protect himself.

And yet, people share the locations of celebrities and other public figures on social media all the time. There are countless posts out there in which someone says something like "OMG I just bumped into M. Night Shyamalan in the Dollar General in Dunlap! He was super nice!" And the information that the jet tracking accounts shared wasn't even as personal as that, because you aren't necessarily where your private jet is. Nor was it as potentially dangerous as tweeting about the restaurant you just saw Rep. Dan Crenshaw having dinner at, because airports are by comparison very secure locations. And what's more, prior to Elon Musk making a big fuss about it, these accounts weren't getting lots of attention. Maybe the Streisand Effect should be renamed the Musk Effect. (It was pretty funny yesterday when someone tried to explain the Streisand Effect to Musk and he replied that he loved Barbra Streisand -- but he misspelled her name.) And again, Musk's actions are (1) contrary to what he claimed was his vision for Twitter -- that only posts that break the law should be blocked; (2) contrary to what he said about the ElonJet flight tracking account just a few weeks ago -- that he would not ban it even though he didn't like it, because he believed in free speech; (3) supported by rule changes that were only made after he ordered the ElonJet tracking account banned (rule changes that if taken literally would prevent all sorts of previously normal posting behavior); and (4) "justified" by what appears to be a lie about the safety of "lil X," his seventh-born son;* but also, in banning the journalists reporting on the incident, Musk is flat out lying about what they did and violating the very rules he just had changes.

(*In addition to the claimed incident not having been reported to the police, I would question Musk's argument that we should naturally assume that his two-year-old had traveled with him, and thus that knowing the plane's location puts his son at risk. He and Grimes, the mother of X and Y, the fourth youngest and youngest of his ten children, are separated, and Musk is regularly traveling for business. My default assumption would be that the kids were with her and not bouncing back and forth between Tesla in Texas and Twitter in California. This, as Matt Yglesias notes, raises another point: Musk claims residence in Texas but he's been spending a lot of time in California, who no doubt is keeping careful track of that, because they'd like a share of his taxes.)

It would be more honest if he just said: it's my site, and I'll change the rules whenever I like for whatever reason. But even there he apparently risks running afoul of the law, because the most recent changes to Twitter prevent users from posting any links to Mastodon, a competitor, and that might violate antitrust regulations.

My feelings remains that this information belongs to the American public, and if a rich person with a private jet doesn't want the location of their plane known, then they can fly commercial instead like the rest of plebes. In other words, I agree with the Republican Congressman from Michigan's comment here that suspending the flight-tracker accounts is:



Edited to add some interesting notes on the ownership of the plane in question.
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I mentioned yesterday that Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss, who have been "reporting" out Elon Musk's "Twitter files" project (sharing emails Musk has provided to them in order to push a narrative about Twitter having unduly influenced the 2020 election), had yet to comment on Musk's decision to ban multiple journalists. Taibbi was as pro-Musk as ever today, tweeting yet another installment in the series, but Weiss did address the recent doings at Twitter. Back in April, she had summed up opposition to Musk's prospective purchase of Twitter as "He wants free speech. Those who hate him don't." Today, although being rather half-hearted about it -- she largely dismisses the latest concerns as no big deal: both "the old regime" and "the new regime" at Twitter, she says, act per "whims and biases" -- as if suspending Donald Trump and others for attempting a coup is the same thing as suspending reporters for doing their jobs -- but to her credit, that statement does allow that Musk is acting from bias, and furthermore, she said that the journalists whose accounts were suspended from Twitter yesterday should be reinstated.

Ha ha ha! As I was writing this post, on and off over the past several hours, Musk engaged in a public spat with Weiss about her very mild suggestion that the unfairly banned journalists be reinstated, telling Weiss that: "Rather than rigorously pursuing truth, you are virtue-signaling to show that you are 'good' in the eyes of media elite to keep one foot in both worlds."

I never thought the lions would eat my face.
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(Edited again to add: Twitter continues to ban journalists with no real justification. In addition to those previously mentioned, last night the account Voice of America's Steve Herman was suspended, and today saw the banning of Linette Lopez of Business Insider. Lopez, who was written many stories about Musk over the years -- most notably about safety concerns with Tesla products -- hadn't tweeted the location of Musk's plane. It seems he's just settling scores. And as Rep. Ted Lieu (Democrat of California) pointed out, Musk is legally within his rights to ban any user he wants. But it does continue to stink of hypocrisy.)
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Meanwhile:

Several notable accounts reinstated by Twitter tonight:

Mike Lindell: MyPillow CEO and 2020 election denier

Jim Hoft: Editor of the right-wing conspiracy website The Gateway Pundit

Jaden McNeil: Far-right streamer and former Groyper

Tracy Diaz: Major QAnon influencer

Lindell's first tweet upon being allowed back was to thank Musk and to demand that we: "MELT DOWN THE ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES AND TURN THEM INTO PRISON BARS!"

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Edited yet again to add some very interesting comments about how there is a growing believe among tech venture capitalists that journalism shouldn't exist: "Why does the press have a right to investigate private companies? Let the market decide."

[N.E. Brigand]

Twitter yesterday "permanently" suspended another reporter, Taylor Lorenz of the Washington Post, with no explanation given. Lorenz had not violated the new rule. However, she had just tweeted at Musk asking for comment on the story he's told about his child having been put in danger.

Today, Elon Musk tweeted that Lorenz's suspension was only temporary and that the reason for her suspension was "prior doxxing." It appears this refers not to anything she did on Twitter but to a news article she wrote two years ago in which she revealed the identity of an influential pseudonymous Twitter user.

Meanwhile, Musk attended the World Cup Finals in Qatar today in the company of Jared Kushner.

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