The billionaire had promised not to touch it.
The account automatically reporting the routes of Elon Musk's private jet was suspended by the platform on Wednesday, illustrating its variable geometry approach to moderation.
“My commitment to freedom of expression goes so far as not to ban the account that follows my plane, even if it poses a direct risk to my personal safety,” Elon Musk wrote on Twitter in early November, a few days later. having bought the platform for 44 billion dollars.
Created by a student and followed by around 520,000 people, @ElonJet used public data to automatically indicate when and where the Spacex and Tesla boss's aircraft took off and landed.
“Account suspended” was simply written on the account in question, baptized @ElonJet, on Wednesday.
In a message posted at the top of the account when it was still visible, its author stressed having "all rights to transmit information" on the jet insofar as the data is public and that all the planes, even that of the American president Air Force 1, have the obligation to be equipped with a transponder, a device intended to help their identification by radar.
“Twitter policy states that data found on other sites may be shared here as well,” the post read.
Kanye West persona non grata
The personal account of the student, Jack Sweeney, was also suspended a few hours later.
It indicated how to find information about Elon Musk's jet on other social networks.
Since his arrival at the head of the platform, the multi-billionaire has sent mixed messages about what is authorized or not.
Fervent defender of a great freedom of expression – as long as the remarks respect the law – he restored accounts previously banned by the social network, including that of Donald Trump.
But he also suspended that of Kanye West after the publication of several messages deemed anti-Semitic and refused the return to the platform of the far-right conspirator, Alex Jones condemned for claiming that a massacre in a school was only a staging.
Moderation: internal documents
Elon Musk has also promoted in recent days the publication of several series of “Twitter files”, internal documents supposed to illustrate questionable moderation practices under the previous management.
He also personally attacked Twitter's former head of security, Yoel Roth, who later had to leave his home for security reasons, according to US media.
The co-founder and ex-boss of the platform, Jack Dorsey, came to the defense of his former colleagues on Tuesday, saying in a message that the attacks against them "can be dangerous and do not solve anything".
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He also defended the idea that "only the original author of content should be able to delete it" and that moderation should not be done via a "centralized system" but carried out by algorithms designed by the general public.
