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Elon Musk’s Double Standard On ‘Doxxing’: Says It’s Okay To Reveal Zuck’s Address Because It’s Available Via Google
What, Elon Musk is a hypocrite? Who knew?
You may recall that last year, after directly promising that he’d leave up the ElonJet account, which reveals public information regarding the flights of Elon Musk’s private plane, he changed his mind and banned it, along with any reporter who even mentioned the existence of the account anywhere, claiming it was “doxxing.”
A bunch of Elon’s biggest fans suddenly became huge believers that revealing publicly available information about a plane, which does not identify who is on the plane, or give anyone any access to the plane itself, was “doxxing.” It was not.
As everyone other than Elon’s sycophantic fans realized how ridiculous this was, Elon made up a story about how a car carrying his young son was attacked and somehow that was the fault of ElonJet. Later reporting showed this was all nonsense. The supposed confrontation happened a day after the last post from the ElonJet account and 26 miles away from the airport, meaning the account had nothing to do with any of it. Later police reporting suggested the incident was created by Musk’s own security team, not the other individual.
Anyway, it became clear that Musk had a very unique definition of “doxxing,” which was simply revealing information about Elon Musk that Elon Musk doesn’t like. Elon has had little concern about revealing info on others, such as a former top employee of Elon’s, whose home information was posted to Twitter and kept up while Elon posted blatant lies to egg on attacks.
That takes us to late last week, when Elon hopped in a Tesla to livestream a test drive of the latest version of Tesla’s “Full Self Driving,” which has never been full self driving at all (even in the livestream). The grainy footage does not speak well to Musk’s livestreaming ambitions for exTwitter, and left many who follow Musk’s antics supremely unimpressed.
However, at about 27 minutes, Elon tried to bring back a bad joke from a few weeks ago, said he’d punch in Zuckerberg’s Palo Alto home address and have the car drive to it. He admits he doesn’t actually know the address (which is… not what he’d suggested a few weeks ago), and asked Google where Zuck lived.
How it comes about is that he’s sitting there parked, talking things over with a colleague, and Elon says that maybe he’ll just put in the address for Tesla’s HQ (technically Tesla’s “official” HQ is in Texas after Elon “left” California in a huff during the pandemic, but a few months back the company shifted most things back to California, which they justify by saying California is the company’s “engineering headquarters.”).
Musk’s colleague cracks some mumbled joke about going “to the fight,” leading Musk to laugh uproariously at what must be the funniest joke he’s ever heard, and asks “where does he live?” in reference to Zuckerberg. They joke back and forth a bit about knocking on his door and inquiring if Zuckerberg would like to “engage in hand to hand combat,” which, again, is the same joke Musk made a few weeks ago.
But then he searches the address on Google and and you can see it pretty clearly on the screen. Then Elon, appears to have a moment of realization that maybe that’s worse than, you know, ElonJet, so he (in typical Elon fashion) makes up some justification for it:
So now we’re… ha ha ha ha ha… at least going to where Google says, you know, Zuckerberg lives… You know, I don’t think… this can’t be considered doxxing if we just Googled it. So. Um. [Loooooooong pause.] So now we’ll just see the drive to where Google thinks he lives.
After a short drive, during which you can see where they’re driving, they get to a house and Elon insists it’s probably not Zuck’s house because he can’t see any security, and so they leave, as Elon again jokes about how Zuck said “name the date” for a fight and Elon says “how about now?”
Either way, the exact meaning of doxxing is certainly disputed. But if you think that ElonJet (revealing public flight info) is doxxing, then you have to think that showing the address Google told you is Zuckerberg’s house is also doxxing. The excuse that “if it’s on Google it’s not” doesn’t make much sense, given that ElonJet info is… also available via Google.
I know, I know, at this point, Elon’s fans will insist that Elon must be right because Elon is always right. But it’s worth highlighting how Elon’s entire schtick is blatant hypocrisy, in which he’ll come up with excuses for suppressing those he dislikes, while insisting that it’s not wrong when he or his friends do it.
Filed Under: address, doxxing, elon musk, elonjet, full self driving, mark zuckerberg
Companies: tesla, twitter, x
Comments on “Elon Musk’s Double Standard On ‘Doxxing’: Says It’s Okay To Reveal Zuck’s Address Because It’s Available Via Google”
If it's on Google...
So, make sure you post everything on something else first before you post it on exTwitter, just to be safe. Got it 🙂
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“Elon Musk’s Double Standard On ‘Doxxing’: Says It’s Okay To Reveal Zuck’s Address Because It’s Available Via Google”
I thought I read somewhere that Elonjet used information freely available via google .. hmm yeah ok, par for the course.
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Yes. You read it in the article you replied to:
We all know it, its pretty clear.
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I’m splitting hairs here, but the reason it’s on Google because it’s publicly available flight data, needed for flight control to help control planes and the like…
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And that has to do with my point how?
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Basically, flight information is public available since it’s needed for actual air traffic control and the people responsible for that are the government. There are various sites you can go to to give live readings on the data of plane locations (and other forms of transport such as shipping). I’ve used them many times to see if a family member’s flight is on time, if it’s been diverted, etc., and I don’t think private jets are different for the most part.
But, even if it wasn’t that would only give people to location of his plane. It wouldn’t tell them things like the passenger manifest, where the people on the plane went after it landed, etc.
As far as I know, it’s a bad argument because someone stalked his wife and kid. Which is bad if true, but the account couldn’t have given them any information that a person using other sites wouldn’t have.
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Nor would it tell you anything before the plane took off, and private flights don’t even show the intended destination. So as a means of knowing someone’s location in order to plan some sort of harm it’s damn near useless. It doesn’t even come close to the obvious and proven risks from posting someone’s physical address.
Or, it’s okay if he or his Nazi pals do it, as well as the backers, leaders and the 74 million traitors to humanity that subscribe to that ideology.
I guess I should brace for the eventual SWATTING then.
Doxing has to do with calling attention to public records, not the public records themselves.
Someone living at 123 Main Street can be public info while someone putting that same info on a site that disparages the person can also be doxing or even stalking.
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There is the sterile broad definition of Doxxing that is so broad as to apply any time I say Joe Biden lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. However, ‘Doxxing’ in the internet age is not simply the act of revealing information. It is spoken of in negative terms and carries cultural information that isn’t expressed in a dictionary definition. Of key importance is the intent. That makes a line between doxxing (the despised agressive act) and an act of journalism a somewhat subjective.
Which would be why the article spent its time pointing out not that Elon doxxed zuck in an objective, but that by Elon’s subjective standard, he doxxed Zuck.
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propaganda, thats a term I wanted to use as an example here. Propaganda has a very broad dictionary definition, but most often when its used the implication is immoral, manipulative messaging intended to manufacture support for a policy or proposal. But the term isn’t exclusive to the implied objectionable uses. Just about all political messaging is propaganda, in one way or another.
Similarly, what people mean when they say doxxing isn’t generally the broad dictionary definition, but instead an objectionable subset. And its not simply pointing out public records. finding the location of a camgirl by stalking them from their PO box and revealing their address is doxxing, but its not revealing a public record.
Musk has consistent principles:
* It’s not okay to do anything he doesn’t like.
* It’s okay to do anything he does like.
What’s so hard to understand about that?
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Bingo. Like all alt-right numpties, he’s fine with fascism, censorship and abuse, he just doesn’t like being the target. They’re still adolescents – all the rights, none of the responsibilities, it’s just that his money stopped him from growing up.
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Those principles are not the ones he espouses, and are not representative of the principles his fans think he has. And there are people who love him and justifying anything he says to somehow match up. If you just scream about how musk is a narcissist who makes up justifications after the fact, you only preach to the choir.
But studies show when you simply present the hypocrisy and ask supporters to explain it, while some will double down on the justifications, some will in thinking about it be exposed to the flawed reasoning they had ignored in favor of following the great man.
There is a reason propagandists “just ask questions”. It not a way to program you. They are filtering for the double down crowd. The side that will buy into the motivated reasoning and self-reinforce. They filter for those pre-disposed by nature or upbringing to program themselves.
Whats really astounding is how many people continue to think that we can’t convince anyone, that the only way to engage is to just poop emoji and fuck off, when the research shows soft language and “just asking questions” does a remarkably good job of bypassing the defense mechanisms that cause people to shut out opposing voices and double down.
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And for clarity and cover my ass needs, this is not exclusive to a side or a political party. The ability for questions to unlock biases is the same mechanism that encourages doubling down. its a tool and its moral value is in how its used, not that it is used.
Lemme fix that a bit.
Elon’s core guiding principles:
Good old stochastic terrorism
If posting publicly available information that allows you to track a plane that may or my not have Elon on it is hugely problematic because that puts his safety at risk then making a huge deal about someone’s home address and how you really want to punch them(something I’m sure will be completely ignored by his rabid fans) certainly seems like he just deliberately put Zuckerberg’s life at risk.
What a surprise that someone who made up a rule to justify his tantrum is willing to decide that his own rule doesn’t apply to him.
Moving on
Along with thousands of other companies large and small that didn’t want the local government to step on the neck of lady liberty.
Over one hundred thousand companies moved from California? New York, and Illinois, during the early totalitarianism of the 5th generation of the SARS virus base.
As for complaining about addresses, well, when news video leaves the address visible of a public official during a report, and then protestors harass that person in their front yard…
When it’s perfectly acceptable to list the addresses of Supreme Court justices, this isn’t exactly something worth a whole article.
Other than musk being a hypocrite.