- Elon Musk purchased shares of Twitter after unsuccessfully petitioning the CEO to remove a Twitter account tracking his private jet.
- Musk’s personal gripes played a key role in his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter.
- Musk banned the account after promising not to, highlighting his prioritization of getting his way over free speech.
Archive link: https://archive.ph/ttBv9
this is so astoundingly petty, it might just be true.
although i doubt that’s the only reason he bought it, i wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a major factor that got him serious about buying it.
Information control
Infrastructure control. Transportation, communications, banking, etc. He’s going after it all. I’ll never touch anything he’s even remotely involved in.
Incidentally… https://mastodon.social/@elonjet is still going strong.
Holy shit this dude fucking lives on his plane. Like I feel guilty about the 2-3x per year I fly to see family but this fucker has flown that far already in the past week. Why? Does he not know how to do a video call?
You shouldn’t really feel guilty about anything like that. Asking hundreds of millions to billions of people to drastically change their lives and practice austerity is insane while billionaires do whatever they want and corporations push legislation that makes it harder to conserve. Our meager efforts won’t matter much if the biggest offenders go pollute wantonly.
Individual’s biggest efforts are pushing for legislation and politicians who will curb corporate abuses. Everything is a drop in a bucket that’s already overflowing.
There’s a limit to what is ethical when it comes to the acceptance of one’s own carbon footprint. It’s OK to use plastic bottles every now and then, but fuck flying 3 times a year. This is part of the problem, and something that we’ll need to learn to live without eventually.
Why would billions of us stop our excess pollution when we can just kid ourselves a handful of billionaires are doing it all? /s
That’s why capitalism is inherently incompatible with stopping Climate Change and we’re all fucked.
Ugh, I feel the same. I know the top 1% of the world or whatever emits tons and tons more CO2 per year than the other 99%, but I didn’t know it was this bad. That plane is flying multiple times per day. Sure Musk is probably not in it all the time, but that doesn’t matter.
Private jets should be banned all together, let’s see how quickly they suddenly find out the internet exists.
Things like this are perfect reminders that we don’t have to change every person on the planet, just eliminate the erronneous emissions.
Eliminate the erroneous emissions. Interesting take on the ol’ “eat the rich.” I like it!
All air travel should have fuel and emissions tax. Normalize them to commercial airliners. That’ll incentivize larger, more efficient plane designs. It’ll also punish private jets. Also charge a fee for any planes not at least X% full. Also give discounts and waive fees for planes over X size that service under-served airports.
A bunch of regulations like this should make private planes prohibitively expensive, like 10-20x their current cost. But that’s a lot of legislation that huge corporations and billionaires would oppose.
Planes are already pretty fuel efficient per passenger. And larger planes are unlikely, because this would mean all runways they want to use must be extended so the can start and land there.
Planes are already pretty fuel efficient per passenger
Eh… They’re similar to cars for a similar distance. But, that still means gobs of CO2 emitted if you’re traveling from NY to LA, which would be a massive trip in a car.
Commercial planes with high occupancy got somewhat efficient (until you compare to other modes of transportation), but private jets with 1 ego on board are incredibly fuel inefficient.
It’s a very big ego though, so of course it needs a lot of fuel.
Carbon emissions per km:-
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Domestic flight: 240 g
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Eurostar (train): 4 g
Source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-footprint-travel-mode
That’s domestic flights in the UK which are stupidly short. Short and long haul flights are at 150g which is already less than ICE cars at ~170 and not far above the average bus at 100g. Though obviously no where near electrified rail.
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And if only manufactures would make use of hydrogen turbojets.
People with private jets often charter them out when they’re not using them. The best place for an airplane is in the air. Only bad things happen when you let it sit around on the ground all the time. It’s not much different than commercial planes that spend most of their time in the air.
Sure, a private jet will have more emissions than an Airbus, but it’s a marginal increase. It’s not like rich people with their planes are producing a million times more pollution that wouldn’t exist if they didn’t have a private jet. They’re still going to fly, at least for longer trips.
It’s easy to go down a rabbit hole with this line of reasoning. Who else is using less efficient aircraft or taking unnecessary flights? Are all those police helicopter flights necessary? What about people flying to go party on an island somewhere versus some more noble purpose? Or airlines with a half empty flight? Meanwhile, it’s the oil companies producing the vast majority of carbon emissions while we squabble over travel itineraries and choice of aircraft.
If elon didn’t have a private jet and had to travel in a regular passenger plane, it would aboulutely make a difference I’m carbon emissions. Right now, we are seeing emissions from passenger planes AND private jets. Take away private jets and the passenger planes will still create the same emissions regardless. Your argument is that the addition of private jets are a “marginal increase” of emissions.
That makes no sense. Less planes = less emissions. Private jets + planes = more emissions. Just like, if most people took public transportation on the road. Busses + cars = more emissions than if there were no cars and only public transportation left. There would be less emissions if the wealthy traveled in a regular passenger plane like everyone else.
It’s easy to go down a rabbit hole with that kind of reasoning.
The point is that one plane can transport a large amount of passengers in one trip, compared to, transporting the same amount of passengers in a private jet would take multiple trips. Transport more people with less fuel use. This is why public transportation is so important. It actually does make a difference. Elon just likes his toys and doesn’t give a shit about the effect it has on the environment. That’s why he’s so focused on Mars.
This planet is doomed because of people like him, and he knows it. Otherwise, he would be investing his money into making the earth a better place instead of investing in trying to leave it.
This follows classic maritime law: You don’t have to pay taxes if you live in the air. That is what my lawyer Chareth Cutestory said. I have the best lawyers
Dude takes a 22 minute flight. My god how small do you need to feel to boost your ego to do that instead of video.
10 minute flight for nearly 1 ton of CO2 emissions 2 days ago.
Others close to him use the jet as well, but I imagine it’s still heavily Elon
Also, many of the flights are empty. The flight will be moved so it’s in position if needed, or it will drop him off and fly elsewhere.
That seems wasteful, of any flight really.
It’d be cool if jets doing that could partner with freight companies and move cargo if needing to reposition.
Uber for flight cargo
Every private jet flight is wasteful. But, Elon Musk’s wealth fluctuates by up to $5 billion every single day. Even if he spent $5m a day on his jet, it would be an amount he wouldn’t even notice. He could literally buy a brand new private jet every single day and not notice the cost.
Do your bosses (and their bosses) support work-from-home? They know how, but it’s about control for these people.
If Musk saw this carbon would literally be shooting out of his ears like an old bugs bunny cartoon
Does that also get posted to Threads or now Bluesky?
Since Threads is federated, it should be accessible from there.
Threads isn’t federated yet. It’ll be a while before fediverse accounts can be seen on threads
The profile is “elonjet . net” (without the space) on bluesky.
I don’t get this. What is the point? Why would anyone care where a billionaire is flying to and from? Just for kicks?
I think it’s mostly aboit the massive carbon footprint of a private jet and Elon has a rep for really short frequent flights.
What a snowflake
A visionary snowflake.
How is he visionary, exactly?
I mean, I didn’t think it needed an /s because does anyone take the term “visionary” seriously anymore?
My bad
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isnt he also back on twitter?
Called it! 100% called it!
Yep. I called that too. Talk about burning money…
Yes this makes far more sense then the brain dead “bought it to kill it” theory that’s just cope for phony stark
Here we are talking of very debatable definitions of “making sense” tbh
So, lawsuit against Bloomberg incoming?
So Taylor Swift is going to buy it next?
For perspective, $30 billion would afford the food and freight to feed every human on Earth for a year.
Less than that would make him a god in Haiti (that is, elevate the nation out of crisis and put a bronze statue of Musk in every state park commemorating how awesome he is.
A few billion could provide free high-speed internet to everyone worldwide. Curiously Musk considered this, but then wondered how to get everyone to pay fees for it.
ETA I got these values when we were discussing Bloomberg’s wealth in 2019 when he was trying to Secret Hitler the Democratic party, and how much could be bought with the $500 million (at the time only 200 million was declared) he spent on his campaign. The $30 billion to feed the world value came up in in one of the news articles.
Well, the economy is much different and we’re dealing with considerable inflation (and our billionaires, including Bloomberg are much richer.)
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Becase it’s false and the math severely wrong.
Funny how federation works. I deleted the comment almost immediately. And yet here we are.
i have found that deleting comment does not propagate to other instances nearly as well as creating one…
Yea, now $30B will buy everyone on earth a McDonald’s hash brown, including tax.
A few billion could provide free high-speed internet to everyone worldwide
Since there is about few billion people on earth, does that mean that high speed internet costs about a dollar per person? You did not think this through, did you?
There are eight billion people on earth, so it’s even cheaper. Internet access is one of those things that requires infrastructure that gets cheaper per user as it scales up. At a global level, yes, internet should be ridiculously cheap per capita.
The cost we pay here in the US is mostly profit for the oligopolies that control the last mile. Licensing fees because they control access via legal obstruction. If I were to create a community server, it could be much cheaper as a non-profit cooperative, but for the cost defending from litigation from the established chains.
In other words, cost of the internet is inflated by force, not because internet access is expensive to construct and maintain.
I’m having trouble figuring out the math for this. My assumptions lead me to divide $30b by 8b people, which is about $4/person. I’m not confident that people can eat on $4 for a year.
What am I getting wrong?
Maybe it’s to provide food security just for those who don’t already have it
They clearly stated
food and freight to feed every human on Earth for a year
It’s a shit load of money, but let’s be honest you need way more than that to feed everyone. If Musk decided to donate all of his fortune, then maybe that’d be true.
Musks fortune was only 340b at its peak, and the moment he tried to access 44b of it for Twitter it collapsed the price.
Even 340b is still only $41 a year for everyone.
Yea even assuming the 340b a 25 pound bag of rice was about 22 bucks when I googled it and about the same for cheap beans. Maybe between the two a person could survive a long time but it wouldn’t be pleasant. I’m sure if you buy in those bulks you could get it for way cheaper too but still, math doesn’t add up.
Based on the prices I looked up you could feed everyone on Earth 1,800 kcal of potatoes for one day for around 40 billion USD. So… lets do it! Global spud day! Don’t ask me where to get a pot that big for boiling all them taters though.
You do make a relavant point. Prices have doubled in the last couple of years and I think the statistic is from the early 2010s.
I just did the math myself before seeing your comment and you’re right that math is fucked lmao.
That the costs scale down the more massive the production. If you’re in the industrialized world, the money you pay for food is almost all profit. Not the cost of agriculture, not the cost of harvesting and packaging, not freight time, maintenance and fuel, not logistics and accounting. Profit.
Most of our money spent is bribes goes in the pocket of each of the capitalists along the way taking their bit of rent.
So is Taylor Swift going to buy it next?
Probably. She’ll change it to eX. Tweets will be called ditty and you’ll be required to sing them.
I’d go for Swiffer.
YES
With that name, she’d clean up!
snap snap snap and dance fool
She would keep the pay to play mentality though, as that’s how she got her start after all
If they weren’t doing anything wrong they shouldn’t care who watches where they go, right?
Elon Musk burning billions of dollars to not have his public information publicly posted is one of the biggest Ls he’s ever taken and that’s a long list to fight to the top of.
And totally on par for him.
And you know the worst part about it? Burning that amount of money makes basically zero difference in his life.
But you forget the best part. The tracker still exists and everyone still knows where his fucking jet is flying to because that shit is public information by air navigation regulation. There’s still bots that regularly posts the MuskJet location both in Twitter and Mastodon. So he spent all that money and still failed.
I love that for him 🥰
Or really, he wanted to talk shit and pump and dump, and he got caught by some savvy lawyers at twitter.
Then he tried to turn it into a political tool sprinkled with his narcissism, hoping foreign governments would pay him to manipulate narratives. But now nobody gives a shit, he has lawsuits left and right and is likely going to go broke, and he’s scared away all the advertisers who were his life blood.
He tried to pull a trump but nobody actually backed him up, and they’re likely going to let him fall.
Twitter was the main tool in the Arab Spring revolutions. Whatever the Saudis paid to buy and destroy it was cheap for their goals.
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it had to be politically motivated. even elon must be smart enough to know that kicking the kid off twitter wouldn’t stop the tracking of his plane… which is still readily available via multiple sources. he could have been dumb enough to spend $billions just to steal the @x handle though.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A particular beef involving a college student tracking his private jet was the catalyst for the billionaire purchasing shares of Twitter, commencing his takeover of the social media platform, according to a new book about the ordeal.
“Musk had also unsuccessfully petitioned Agrawal [CEO of Twitter at the time] to remove a Twitter account that was tracking his private plane,” says an excerpt from Battle for the Bird, a new book on Musk’s takeover, published by Bloomberg on Thursday.
The book seems to confirm that Musk’s personal gripes played a key role in his $44 billion acquisition of the social media platform.
Musk touts “free speech” as the main reason he bought Twitter, but the billionaire was actively trying to silence a college student he had a feud with before he was CEO.
The person behind the account, Jack Sweeney, is a college student who’s now famous for tracking the private jets of Musk and Taylor Swift.
Musk was heavily focused on promoting right-wing speech when he bought Twitter, which was lacking under Jack Dorsey’s management, but also on settling his internet beef.
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