Twitter notes private jet followed Elon Musk

Twitter has removed an account that tracked Elon Musk’s private jet using publicly available flight data. Musk, the new owner of the platform, has already made several attempts to suspend the account.

The @elonjet account was unavailable on Wednesday. On this page, with more than 526,000 followers, a tweet appeared with every Musk flight. 20-year-old programmer and sophomore Jack Sweeney started the account in 2020.

In addition to @elonjet, Sweeney ran a number of “bot” accounts that tracked the private jets of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, and a number of Russian oligarchs. These were still available today, but have since been removed. Additionally, Sweeney herself was kicked off Twitter.

On @elonjet’s disappearance, Sweeney told the AP he woke up Wednesday to a barrage of messages from people saying @elonjet’s tweets were missing. When he logged in, he saw a notification that the account was permanently suspended for violating Twitter rules.

It’s unclear what those rules were, according to Sweeney. You submitted an online form to appeal the suspension.

Sweeney says Musk offered him $5,000 last year to close the account because he was concerned for his safety. The student thought it was too low an amount. Later, Sweeney would be offered a Tesla on the condition that he leave the page, but he declined that offer as well.

After Musk had Twitter at the end of October resumed, it initially seemed like @elonjet might continue to exist after all. Moss announced on the platform that his commitment to free speech went so far that the narrative was left up in the air. “He said this is free speech and he’s doing the opposite,” Sweeney now tells the AP news agency of the takedown.