Jack Dorsey tells student who tracks Elon Musk's plane to keep doing it after he was banned on Twitter

Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, has encouraged a student who's known for tracking Elon Musk's private jet to keep it up despite being banned from the platform.

Jack Sweeney created a Twitter account with the handle ElonJet in 2020, when he started using bots to keep tabs on the location of Musk's private plane.

He gained attention last year after Musk offered him $5,000 (£3,950) to take down the account and stop tracking the flights, but Sweeney came back with a counter-offer of $50,000 (£39,500), and Musk never paid up.

CNN

Sweeney kept tracking the plane, but things came to a head after Musk bought Twitter last year and gained new power as the CEO.

Musk initially claimed he had such a commitment to free speech that he wouldn't ban 'the account following [his] plane' despite describing it as a 'direct personal safety risk', but his view quickly seemed to change.

Sweeney's ElonJet account was suspended in December along with his personal account and accounts he'd set up for other jet trackers, and last month Musk claimed his account had been home to 'real time doxxing' - which involves publishing private information online.

When asked in an interview with BBC News whether Musk was 'flexing his muscle' by suspending the account, he responded: "No, it's just real-time doxxing is not allowed."

The information published by Sweeney's account was publicly available - he just took the leg work out of people having to look for it.

Twitter/@elonmusk

With that in mind, Twitter co-founder Dorsey thinks Sweeney should keep going.

Dorsey now sits on the board for competing app Bluesky, and he got into a conversation with Sweeney after the college student dropped him a message on the platform.

"What's ur take on ElonJet?" Sweeney asked, to which Dorsey responded to imply he was on board and say that Sweeney could use Bluesky and another app, Nostr, to share updates in lieu of Twitter.

"Keep on keepin on," Dorsey wrote. "Send updates here and to nostr."

Bluesky is currently an invite-only app, which Sweeney joined on 30 April.

He quickly set up both a personal and an ElonJet account, telling Insider: "It has that enticing feeling like Twitter."

Sweeney met a brief snag when he found someone on Bluesky had already claimed the handle @elonjet, but he quickly regained ownership after sending a message to the user.

"I wanted it in good hands," the owner said when Sweeney got in touch.