MR. UNRELIABLE

Internet Sleuth Pours Cold Water on Musk’s Jet-Tracking Twitter Bans

Geo-location data cast doubt on whether an alleged stalking incident was connected to a jet-tracking Twitter account.

An internet sleuth poured cold water on Elon Musk’s justification for banning a Twitter user who tracked his jet (a move he followed with a series of other bans, including of prominent journalists). The billionaire Twitter owner had argued that posting the location of his jet amounted to “doxxing” and claimed that a “crazy stalker” had followed a car with his son in it on Tuesday—an incident he suggested was facilitated by the tracker. But according to Eliot Higgins, founder of the investigative journalism outfit Bellingcat, an individual associated with Bellingcat “geolocated the video” of the alleged incident Musk had posted about. As it turns out, the car was not “close to any airports.” As it stands, Higgins added, “we only have Musk’s word he was followed from an airport... In fact, he barely connects the two events, because tracking a car is very different from tracking a plane.”