College student who tracks Elon Musk's private jet responds to being 'banned' from Twitter
Topics: Elon Musk, Twitter, Technology
Claire Reid
Featured Image Credit: @jxcksweeney/Twitter / Belga News Agency / Alamy
Topics: Elon Musk, Twitter, Technology
The college student who was kicked off Twitter for tracking Elon Musk’s private jet has said he’s ‘doing fine’ following his ban.
Jack Sweeney, 20, set up the @Elonjet account in June 2020 - and the account used publicly available data to track Musk's private jet.
But the college student had his account banned with Musk threatening legal action after an alleged ‘crazy stalker’ followed a car carrying his son in Los Angeles on Wednesday (December 14). Musk said the man ‘blocked’ the car from moving and ‘climbed on the hood’.
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Following the incident, Musk wrote in a tweet: “Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation. 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.”
He also tweeted to say: “Legal action is being taken against Sweeney & organisations who supported harm to my family.”
Following this, Sweeney saw his @Elonjet account had been banned from the site alongside several other accounts he runs.
Speaking to the Independent, Sweeney said he hadn’t heard from Musk since the ban and wasn’t concerned about any legal action just yet.
He said: “I’m doing fine. He’s just saying that on Twitter, there’s nothing official and there probably won’t be.”
Last month, Musk had said he would allow the account to remain active as part of his ‘commitment to free speech’.
He wrote: “My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk.”
But the billionaire appeared to have had a change of heart following the incident - and the account, which had 500,000 followers had been banned, unbanned and then re-banned again in a matter of days.
Sweeney told the Independent that the last tweet the @Elonjet account had posted was sent 24-hours before the alleged stalking incident.
The college freshman accused Musk of making up Twitter’s rules as he goes along.
Sweeney added: “I still think Tesla and SpaceX are cool things that he does but he’s really spiralled the whole Twitter thing out of control. It’s just one Twitter thing after another.”
When asked if he had hired lawyers following the threats of legal action, he said: “For right now we’re just seeing as we go, there’s not a reason to yet. It’s just a tweet.”