Twitter suspended @ElonJetan account that automatically reported the flights made by the private jet of Elon Musk, who has been the head of the social network since October. A month ago Musk He said that he wouldn’t ban @ElonJet, because he wanted to guarantee free speech on Twitter. But he has now threatened to sue the owner of the account, 20-year-old student Jack Sweeney, after he said his son X – who is 2 – was followed by a “crazy stalker”.
Musk announced on Wednesday that “any account that discloses personal information about a person’s real-time whereabouts will be suspended as a violation of physical security,” while it will be allowed to disclose travel information with a certain delay. Musk justified his decision by explaining that a car carrying his son had been followed by a person who believed he was following him: this person “then stopped the car and got on top of it,” he said Musk.
In addition to @ElonJet, there are various other Twitter profiles that post automatic updates on jet takeoffs and landings of the rich and famous; mostly they are not personalized, i.e. dedicated to the movement of the plane or planes of a single person as in the case of @ElonJet. The data they use is in the public domain.
These accounts have become quite popular and influential in the last yearprovoking protests over the significant environmental impact in terms of greenhouse gas emissions from flights. The success of these accounts has also prompted some movements and parties to demand that the policy limit or ban private planes altogether. Along with @ElonJet, Sweeney’s other accounts were also suspended, as were accounts reporting the jet movements of Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon chief Jeff Bezos and Microsoft chief Bill Gates.
