Elon Only Started Buying Up Twitter Shares After Twitter Refused To Ban Plane Tracking Account
from the who’s-the-free-speech-supporter-now? dept
Ever since he first started to make moves to purchase Twitter, Elon Musk has framed his interest in “rigorously adhering to” principles of free speech. As we’ve noted, you have to be ridiculously gullible to believe that’s true, given Elon’s long history of suppressing speech, but a new book about Elon’s purchase suggests that from the very start a major motivation in the purchase, was to silence accounts he disliked.
According to an excerpt of a new book by reporter Kurt Wagner about the purchase (and called out by the SF Chronicle), Elon had reached out to then Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal to ask him to remove student Jack Sweeney’s ElonJet account (which publicly tracks the location of Elon’s private plane). It was only when Agrawal refused, that Elon started buying up shares in the site.
The excerpt slips in that point in a discussion about how Jack Dorsey arranged what turned out to be a disastrous meeting between Agrawal and Musk early in the process:
The day after, Dorsey sent Musk a private message in hopes of setting up a call with Parag Agrawal, whom Dorsey had hand-picked as his own replacement as CEO a few months earlier. “I want to make sure Parag is doing everything possible to build towards your goals until close,” Dorsey wrote to Musk. “He is really great at getting things done when tasked with specific direction.”
Dorsey drew up an agenda that included problems Twitter was working on, short-term action items and long-term priorities. He sent it to Musk for review, along with a Google Meet link. “Getting this nailed will increase velocity,” Dorsey wrote. He was clearly hoping his new pick for owner would like his old pick for CEO.
This was probably wishful thinking. Musk was already peeved with Agrawal, with whom he’d had a terse text exchange weeks earlier after Agrawal chastised Musk for some of his tweets. Musk had also unsuccessfully petitioned Agrawal to remove a Twitter account that was tracking his private plane; the billionaire started buying Twitter shares shortly after Agrawal denied his request.
In other words, for all his posturing about the need to purchase the site to support free speech, it appears that at least one major catalyzing moment was Twitter’s refusal to shut down an account Elon hated.
As we’ve pointed out again and again, historically, Twitter was pretty committed to setting rules and trying to enforce them with its moderation policies, and refusing to take down accounts unless they violated the rules. Sometimes this created somewhat ridiculous scenarios, but at least there were principles behind it. Nowadays, the principles seem to revolve entirely around Elon’s whims.
The case study of Sweeney’s ElonJet account seems to perfectly encapsulate all that. It was widely known that Elon had offered Sweeney $5k to take the account down. Sweeney had counter-offered $50k. That was in the fall of 2021. Given the timing of this latest report, it appears that Elon’s next move was to try to pressure Agrawal to take down the account. Agrawal rightly refused, because it did not violate the rules.
It was at that point he started to buy up shares, and to present himself (originally) as an activist investor. Eventually that shifted into his plan to buy the entire site outright, which he claimed was to support free speech, even though now it appears he was focused on removing ElonJet.
At one point, Elon had claimed that he would keep the ElonJet account up:
But, also, as we now know, three weeks after that tweet, he had his brand new trust & safety boss, Ella Irwin, tell the trust & safety team to filter ElonJet heavily using the company’s “Visibility Filter” (VF) tool, which many people claim is “shadowbanning”):
Less than two weeks later, he banned the account outright, claiming (ridiculously) that the account was “doxxing” him and publishing “assassination coordinates.”
He then also banned Sweeney’s personal account, even as it wasn’t publishing such info. Followed by banning journalists who merely were mentioning that @ElonJet had been banned.
At this point it should have been abundantly clear that Musk was never interested in free speech on Twitter (now ExTwitter), but it’s fascinating to learn that one of the motivating factors in buying the site originally — even as he pretended it was about free speech — was really to silence a teenager’s account.
Filed Under: assassination coordinates, doxxing, elon musk, elonjet, free speech, jack dorsey, jack sweeney, parag agrawal
Companies: twitter, x
Comments on “Elon Only Started Buying Up Twitter Shares After Twitter Refused To Ban Plane Tracking Account”
Remember when Elon claimed that he bought twitter to ‘save’ his trans daughter and fight the ‘woke mind virus’? I sure do. Remember kids, free speech is important, unless it inconveniences billionaires and makes it easy to see how often they take trips to countries run by human rights abusers… Also family are super important as you can use them to retroactively justify your actions.
Re: Unless by 'save' he meant 'from being a trans person'...
Remember when Elon claimed that he bought twitter to ‘save’ his trans daughter and fight the ‘woke mind virus’?
Ah yes, clearly the best way to protect a trans person is to fight the side that actually considers them to be a person by siding with those that consider the existence of trans people as aberrations to be ‘fixed’ if not threats to be eliminated.
I wouldn't trust Elon
There’s just too many red flags around this guy – definitely not a patriotic American like he tries to portray himself. Some light research will show that even his parents are quesionable, and the apple rarely falls far from the tree.
His ownership of companies like The Boring Company, Neuralink, SpaceX, and X can be seen as part of the Great Reset due to their potential to drive significant changes in technology and society. While Elon has not stated he supports the Great Reset, he sure owns quite a few large corporations that have a finger in that pie. Tesla also.
He’s undoubtedly in ‘the club’. I don’t trust him further than I can spit. Trump either. My 2 sense.
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Yeah, we absolutely cannot trust pedo guy.
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The Boring Company is an outright scam.
Neuralink isn’t anything yet, and may never be.
SpaceX has been profitable for one quarter.
Tesla is on shaky financial grounds as it is.
Long term, I don’t think most of his companies will be much at all…let alone driving a big reset.
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Elon would definitely exploit something like the Great Reset if it ever happened but it’s not going to any more than the 2025 Project on the right will destroy democracy. I can’t believe how frightened so many people are of some hypothetical thought experiment that came about thanks to covid boredom that will have close to zero impact on your life other than self inflicted paranoia. Musk doesn’t care about sustainable development or humanity, he cares about power and people worshipping him. He’s way too wasted and mercurial to coordinate anything resembling effective societal change through the power of his wealth and corporations.
Apartheid emerald space Karen.
Free speech means banning those you disagree with.
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Free speech haters like Hyman Rosen amd Matthew Benet can provide zero examples of “banning those you disageee with.”
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No, free speech (for platforms) means having the ability to set rules of behavior and the freedom to ban those who violate those rules. Absolutely not the same thing at all.
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Weekly first-dose of anti-Elon hate speech. Keep it up!!🙏
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Yeah. Hating the Russian pedoman is a good thing.
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That’s not what hate speech is.
“Well I hated it.”
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Elon would get less hate if he wasn’t a jackass most of the time.
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Says the anonymous white straight male coward who’s never experienced actual hate speech.
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Are you kidding? Just watch any of the trash coming out of gay pedo Hollywood land, or read an MSM op-ed or listen to many degenerate Democrat/progressive politicians–white male conservatives are the one group of people you’re encouraged to hate (and who hatred-of is celebrated!).
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That still isn’t hate speech, even in your fantasy land.
Re: Re: Re: Put a bit more rouge on your poutrage hole
It’s gotta be so exhausting getting up and spending hours every day painting yourself as a victim.
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You’re completely misunderstanding the difference between actual hate speech against an entire class (racism, homophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, etc), and deservedly harsh criticism of that hate speech.
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I mean, you guys love three things.
Shooting kids
Raping kids.
Forcing kids to have kids.
Have you considered not doing things that most people and most religions condemn?
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Those are lovely examples of nothing. You were asked for concrete examples not gibberish about how straight white guys are supposed to be hated now. That’s absurd. What’s hated is obnoxious, self serving jackasses and, sadly for our sex and race, we are littered with obnoxious, self serving jackasses. 99% of serial killers, 90% of murderers and the vast majority of sexual abusers are men so men getting a bad rap is well deserved based on our gender’s overall behavior.
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Exactly right.
Straight white males are absolutely impossible to hate. What they are experiencing now is not hate, it is justified retribution.
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There’s a fairly stark dichotomy that’s almost never mentioned–the right generally hates folks for who they are while the left mostly hate folks for what they do to others. At least that’s been the case until more recently when the right now combines their hate for folks with utterly delusional justifications, and this post exemplifies both quite well.
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Conflates homosexuality with pedophilia, and calls democrats degenerates
“Why do people hate me?”
It’s not racism or sexism. You are just an arsehole.
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None of which is hate speech. For one thing, it has absolutely nothing to do with them being white and male, and it’s the ultra-conservatives who are targeted, not all conservatives. Second, it’s criticism of the ideas and behaviors.
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Can do! As long as this idiot is keeping up with his shenanigans.
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“Hate speech” can mean anything. Thanks, language abusers!
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You’re welcome to stan somebody that has allowed child pornography to explode on Twitter since he bought it but the rest of us with a conscious will excoriate the walking bag of shit.
Cue Matty with a “rah rah Musk” post…
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“It absolutely is doxxing you idiots!”
So he spent (and lost) $44B to silence a teen that was asking for $50k.
Would he buy a whole street to kick off a homeless guy begging for 50 cents?
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That sounds about right.
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Your question assumes that Elon would ever get close enough to actually see a homeless person, as opposed to sending his security team to kick them out before his loafers ever stepped foot near such human filth.
After all, homeless people might be scary assassination squads in disguise.
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Yeah but see you don’t get it. That evil vile horrible teen didn’t get the money
#winning
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“That evil vile horrible teen didn’t get the money”
That’s cool, cause I’m sure it was done for the lolz.
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Nah.
He’d make the threat to buy the whole street, then frantically backpedal when someone holds him to his promise, then spends the next year or so pissing and moaning about how he magically made the street more profitable by lowering security and firing the cleaning staff, but nobody believes the sales figures he scribbled with crayon.
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He’s offer them free Neurolinks.
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No price is too high when it comes to protecting
free speechElon’s ego.There are those who understand and support free speech.
There are those who say ELON supports free speech.
There is zero overlap between these two groups.
The kid with the tracking account deserves to be extremely proud of the results of his efforts, I hope he manages to get serious rewards, I mean beyond the massive schadenfreude of watching the train wreck he’s helped turn Musk into.
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TBH, Elmo hasn’t needed any help with that.
5k.
50k..
44b…
That escalated quickly, and Elon still hasn’t learned some things aren’t can’t be bought
Nazi-enabler speaks with forked tongue.