Elon Musk has again broken one of his many promises since he owns Twitter. The social network has suspended the popular account of ElonJetwho followed the route of his private jet, despite the fact that the manager himself stated last November not to do so, because it would go against freedom of expression on the platform.
The truth is that Elon Musk has been closely following for months the Twitter account that a teenager created with the aim of detailing all the movements of the Gulfstream G650 that the also CEO of Tesla and SpaceX —as well as probably part of his team— uses to move around. . In fact, just a few months ago, the user who managed it; Jack Sweeney, stated to Protocol than his own Musk wrote to him offering him $5,000 in exchange for deactivating it., because according to him it was a risk to his safety. “I don’t like the idea of being shot by a nutcase,” the billionaire went on to say. Sweeney refused to disable it, and until now the account continued to publish the landings and takeoffs of said jet.
Elon Musk also used the account tracking his jet as an example to demonstrate his commitment to free speech on Twitter. In a recent tweet He said that although ElonJet poses “a direct risk to personal security,” he would not ban it. In recent days, however, Jack Sweeney himself revealed in a post that Ella Irwin, Twitter’s vice president of trust and safety, asked her team to apply a “very strong VF” (visibility filter) to the account to minimize its appearance on the platform. Musk, for the moment, has not mentioned anything about it. The account also appears as suspended On twitter.
Freedom of expression on Twitter, the fair
Implementing freedom of expression on Twitter has always been one of Elon Musk’s goals. It is, in fact, the main reason why the magnate decided to acquire the company. After his arrival, however, we have seen a multitude of examples that show that, really, the possibility of sharing what each one thinks, regardless of whether it is controversial or not, It is not as the executive promised.
Elon Musk confirmed a few weeks ago that accounts that parody other accounts would be permanently suspended from the platform, as long as they did not prove that it was a parody. The manager also suspended Kanye West’s Twitter account again just days after restoring it, after verifying that the rapper posted a swastika image. In the latter case, and taking into account the atrocities that this symbol represents, the suspension of the account is more than justified. Also known as Ye, he also came to claim to see “good things about Hitler” in an interview.