Elon Musk Takes Legal Action Against Teen Who Tracks His Jet
Remember the 19-year-old student who was tracking Elon Musk’s private jet and publishing its whereabouts on the Twitter account @ElonJet? Even after turning down Musk’s offer of US$5,000 to delete the account and requesting for a Tesla car or an internship instead, neither of which happened, there didn’t seem to be any real beef between the two.
Well, things are different now and said teen, Jack Sweeney, could be in trouble.
Initially, after taking over Twitter, Musk said that he would not be banning the account due to his “commitment to free speech”.
My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 7, 2022
Sweeney at that time said he was making plans to keep the bot, which takes real-time public data of the plane’s location and then tweets it, alive in case @ElonJet is taken down. And he replied favourably to Musk’s tweet.
In early December, however, Sweeney claimed that a Twitter employee (disgruntled, no doubt), who remained nameless, informed him that the visibility of the @ElonJet account had been severely limited; Sweeney shared a screenshot of Ella Irwin, VP of Twitter Trust and Safety, allegedly requesting heavy VF (visibility filtering) on @ElonJet. Hours after his tweet, the student said that Twitter had lifted the ban, implying that it was due to the publicity his thread had gained.
All remained well until this past Wednesday when @ElonJet was permanently suspended. What caused the change of heart? Apparently, someone had followed the car ferrying Musk’s 2-year-old son in Los Angeles; the “crazy stalker” had thought that Musk himself was in the vehicle, blocked the car from moving and climbed onto the hood.
Last night, car carrying lil X in LA was followed by crazy stalker (thinking it was me), who later blocked car from moving & climbed onto hood.
Legal action is being taken against Sweeney & organizations who supported harm to my family.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 15, 2022
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.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 15, 2022
Sweeney’s personal Twitter account, along with his other accounts that track the jets of Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and other uber wealthy and famous people, was also suspended on Wednesday.
When speaking to New York Times, Sweeney defended himself, saying that the information shared on the accounts was already public (that’s true). He added, “If someone wanted to do something, they could do it without me.”