Teen tracking Elon Musk's private jet says the billionaire 'seems really bothered' by it
Topics: Elon Musk, Technology
Anish Vij
Featured Image Credit: CNN / Alamy / Julian Leek
Topics: Elon Musk, Technology
The teenager who has been controversially tracking Elon Musk's private jet movements thinks the billionaire 'seems really bothered' by it.
Last year, the Twitter boss threatened to take legal action against Jack Sweeney - the university student who's been tracking his private jet - with Musk arguing that Sweeny has been putting his family in danger.
The 19-year-old student from Florida is the coder behind the Twitter account @ElonJet, which has now been suspended from the platform.
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"Legal action is being taken against Sweeney & organizations who supported harm to my family," the billionaire and Twitter owner said.
Musk said he wanted to crack down on Twitter 'doxxing' - a term that describes the sharing of another person's whereabouts or identity online.
"Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation," he said. "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."
Well, earlier this week in an exclusive interview, the BBC's James Clayton asked Musk about banning @ElonJet back in December.
"What about @ElonJet?" the journalist asked, to which Musk responded: "What about it?"
Clayton questioned if Musk was just 'flexing his muscle overly'.
He replied: "No, it's just real-time doxxing is not allowed. He was using non-public information combined with public information."
Sweeney has since hit back at the billionaire, telling Insider on Thursday: "His obvious annoyance with ElonJet just adds to the significance of ElonJet. He just doesn't want it to be that visible."
Prior to blocking his account, Musk actually contacted Sweeney to ask him to take the ‘Elon Musk’s Jet’ offline.
In order to tempt the 19-year-old, he offered him $5,000, with his message allegedly stating: “Can you take this down? It is a security risk.”
Sweeney apparently replied: “Yes I can but it’ll cost you a Model 3 only joking unless?” to which Musk then said: “I don’t love the idea of being shot by a nutcase.”
After a bit more back and forth, Musk proceeded to offer Sweeney $5,000, to which Sweeney allegedly replied: “Any chance to up that to $50k? It would be great support in college and would possibly allow me to get a car maybe even a Model 3.”
The Uni student explained to The Guardian: "I created it [the account] because I'm really interested in Elon Musk, and Tesla and SpaceX - and it would be interesting to see where he goes and what business he's up to.
"I asked for $50,000, he said 'thinking about it,' then after a while last week he said 'I don't think it's right to pay to take this down,' and just the other night he blocked me."