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Elon Musk on Thursday made his stand clear about increasing cyber safety on Twitter, saying accounts indulging in doxing – publicly posting identity-related information, especially of real-time locations of someone else – will be penalised. The Twitter CEO, who is also the founder of SpaceX and Tesla, has been coming up with new rules and regulations every week for the micro-blogging platform.
Taking to his official Twitter handle, Musk wrote, “Any account doxing 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.”
Twitter users lauded the move, deeming it to be a necessary safety measure for the platform. “Doxxing someone’s real-life location isn’t free speech,” wrote one user.
“It is a safety issue and fully agree with the ban, no matter if it was to track him or anyone else,” said another user.
Musk further tweeted about catching one such use, along with his video. “Last night, car carrying lil X in LA was followed by crazy stalker (thinking it was me), who later blocked car from moving & climbed onto hood,” he added in the thread, along with a video of the alleged stalker.
“Legal action is being taken against Sweeney and organizations who supported harm to my family,” Musk said.
Jack Sweeney, a student at the University of Central Florida, is said to have operated the @elonjet account since 2020, which came under the scanner recently, for allegedly following the private jet of Elon Musk. Sweeney also ran other Twitter accounts that tracked the private jets of Mark Zuckerberg and other celebrities.
The page @elonjet was suspended Wednesday morning for violating the platform’s rules.
Earlier in the day, Twitter suspended multiple accounts that track the locations of private jets using publicly available flight data. Musk had publicly declared last month that he would not ban the account even though he saw it as a safety risk, saying that it was evidence of his commitment to free speech.
Musk had already released an update for the micro-blogging platform after the second installment of “Twitter Files” revealed how the company built blacklists and actively limited the visibility of certain accounts.