Elon Musk Banned Flight Data on Twitter, and the Guy Behind Helicopters of DC Has Thoughts [View all]

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https://www.washingtonian.com/2022/12/16/elon-musk-banned-flight-data-on-twitter-and-the-guy-behind-helicopters-of-dc-has-thoughts/

Elon Musk Banned Flight Data on Twitter, and the Guy Behind Helicopters of DC Has Thoughts
How Twitter's latest controversy is affecting a popular local account.
Written by Jessica Ruf | Published on December 16, 2022

Since acquiring Twitter, Elon Musk has been talking up his belief in free speech. Last month, he tweeted that his commitment was so strong he would not even ban @elonjet—an account that used publicly available information to track the whereabouts of Musk’s private plane.

But the self-described “free speech absolutist” then suspended the account on Wednesday and announced a new Twitter policy that would ban any account posting “real-time location info,” even if that information is gathered from public data. It didn’t take long for him to start suspending prominent journalists, apparently because Musk thought they had violated the policy.

Andrew Logan, a freelance audio engineer who started tracking DC helicopters as a pandemic hobby, has been pretty critical of Musk’s decision. His account, Helicopters of DC, has garnered nearly 16,000 followers and uses crowdsourced data to track the types of helicopters flying through DC airspace. If you’ve ever wondered what a loud chopper above your head was up to, there’s a good chance his Twitter account had an answer.

We called him yesterday to get his thoughts. Since then, the account appears to have been suspended.

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