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Elon Musk's private jet (2020): A Twitter bot causes a stir
Photo:
HANNIBAL HANSCHKE / REUTERS
Numerous links to the online service Mastodon can no longer be shared on Twitter.
As SPIEGEL was able to understand on Friday morning using two accounts, tweets that referred to the important "Discover" page from the Mastodon cosmos, among other things, could no longer be posted.
Twitter welcomed new posts linking to https://mastodon.social/explore with the note "Something went wrong, but don't worry - just try again." When you did that, a second note appeared: "Not possible, because this link was identified as potentially harmful by Twitter or our partners.« Many profile URLs of mastodon accounts, including https://mastodon.world/@auschwitzmuseum , could no longer be shared.
The direct link to the Mastodon homepage, on the other hand, could still be posted.
The whole thing is allegedly the offshoot of a dispute over a Twitter bot called @ElonJet, which - based on publicly available data - automatically tracked the take-offs and landings of Elon Musk's private jet.
Musk had been annoyed about the account for a long time, and this week @ElonJet has now been blocked.
At the same time, Musk penned down new moderation guidelines, which he staged as anti-doxing rules.
Doxing is a tactic known from the gamer and YouTuber scene, among others, which involves embarrassing or intimidating others by publishing personal, usually non-public data on the Internet.
Musk is about himself
"Any account that posts someone's real-time location data will be suspended as it is a physical security breach," the company's new boss tweeted.
"This includes posting links to websites with real-time location information." Okay is just "posting places someone has traveled to, with a slight delay."
Musk reported in the course of the announcement that a stalker followed a car that his daughter was in.
He also wants to take legal action against the operator of @Elonjet, Jack Sweeney.
Jack Sweeney is a 20-year-old college student.
As part of what appears to be a very broad interpretation of its new rules, Twitter has now also blocked the accounts of several well-known US journalists.
Mastodon's official Twitter account, @joinmastodon, which has existed since June 2017 and had around 175,000 followers on Thursday, is also no longer available on Twitter.
Before that account was banned, he had sent the following message: "Did you know that?
You can follow @ElonJet on Mastodon at https://mastodon.social/@elonjet.«
Only some domains are blocked
According to initial analyzes by the tech magazine The Verge, Twitter is currently blocking the posting of links to Mastodon.social and ten other domains related to the network.
It is not yet clear how long these restrictions will last.
Neither Twitter nor Mastodon have commented on the subject so far.
Jack Sweeney commented on Twitter's actions around @Elonjet on Friday night on Mastodon: "Everything that has to do with me is forbidden," wrote the 20-year-old student.
"So much for free speech."
mbo
