ElonJet Briefly Returned Alongside Big Twitter Policy Update On Doxing

Twitter briefly restored @ElonJet, the automated bot account that tracked Elon Musk's private jet and posted about its flight activity online. Run by Jack Sweeney, the account was suspended earlier today without any official explanation. Hours later, Twitter made a policy change about sharing someone's live location, citing their safety and rules on doxing. Musk had previously claimed the account posed a "direct personal safety risk," but that he wouldn't make a move against the account due to his love for free speech. 

Shortly before the Twitter policy change on sharing someone's live location was announced, the ElonJet account reappeared on Twitter with a follower count that kept randomly changing for no apparent reason. This led to speculation that Musk had a change of heart or that maybe Twitter had just failed to communicate its updated policies before the disciplinary action. Replying to a user discussing @ElonJet's first suspension, the new Twitter CEO said, "Real-time posting of someone else's location violates doxxing policy." However, Musk later added that sharing an individual's location with a 24-hour delay was acceptable and won't count as a policy violation. 

Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation. This includes posting links to sites with real-time location info.

Posting locations someone traveled to on a slightly delayed basis isn’t a safety problem, so is ok.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 15, 2022

Musk says you can't even post links to other sites sharing such information. However, this is a rather surprising about-face, as the Musk-backed "Twitter Files" dump of past internal communication had doxed former Head of Trust & Safety at Twitter, Yoel Roth. Things escalated to such an extent that Roth had to flee his home with his partner seeking a safe haven, reports The Washington Post. Moreover, the personal Twitter handle of Sweeney remains banned, and the same is the case with other jet tracker accounts covering fellow billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates.

Soon after Musk shared his thoughts on the @ElonJet suspension saga, the official Twitter Safety handle made an announcement about a policy change. The safety team says users are free to tweet their own live location, but doing the same for other people poses an "increased risk of physical harm." Following the policy amendment, Twitter will delete tweets that share another individual's live location. Moreover, accounts that engage in such activity will get the suspension axe.

The only flexibility is that you can share someone's live location information after a day, or a minimum gap of 24 hours. However, if the live location information is about a public event, music concert, political gathering, or anything like that, no action will be taken. What is puzzling here is that Sweeney's personal account remains suspended, even though it was the @ElonJet handle that tracked Musk's flight patterns.

On his official Mastodon account, Sweeney has claimed that all of the Twitter accounts he ran have been suspended. Half of those accounts were reportedly harmless and in scientific interest as they tracked NASA aircraft, weather aerial craft, and Air Force vehicles. Sharing an image of a Twitter notice sent to him, Sweeney claims that the policy change on doxing happened after his account was suspended for alleged manipulation and spam. Before all of this transpired, Musk expressed a distaste for suspensions and supported the "freedom of speech, not freedom of reach" mantra.