>
A Florida teenager who has been tracking the movements of Elon Musk’s private jet has lashed out at the tech mogul calling him a “complete hypocrite.”
Musk permanently suspended the @ElonJet Twitter account on Wednesday, which had been created by Jack Sweeney in 2020.
Sweeney, 19, has been tracking Musk’s private Gulfstream jet by obtaining public Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) data.
The 19-year-old had predicted the suspension and linked his followers to endorsement pages on Facebook, Instagram and Telegram.
It comes after Musk vowed not to ban the account following his $44 billion acquisition and just months after the account was ‘shadow banned’, making it unsearchable and untagged.
Jack Sweeney, 19, has been tracking new Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s Gulfstream private jet since 2020 by obtaining public Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) data.
Musk is the owner of a $70 million Gulfstream G650ER private jet and is seen here exiting the plane in Los Angeles in February.
He posted a tweet on his personal account @JxckSweeney on Wednesday confirming the suspension.
“Well it looks like @ElonJet is suspended,” he wrote on Wednesday.
News of the suspension of the accounts was quickly shared on the social media platform, with others also posting about the removal, some criticizing Musk.
One user wrote: “It appears that @elonmusk has removed the account that was tracking the location of his plane (using publicly available information).”
Another said: ‘The absolutist lord of free speech strikes again. What a snowflake @ElonJet suspended.’
The suspension comes after users discovered they could no longer search for the automated account or tag it in tweets via suggested usernames.
The reason for the tight restriction of its accessibility, according to the creator of the bot, was that the Twitter staff had buffered the account in a specific effort.
Over the weekend, Sweeney wrote: ‘About to post my own Twitter files. Thanks complainants.
The 19-year-old Florida student posted a tweet on his personal account @JxckSweeney on Wednesday confirming the suspension.
The 19-year-old predicted the suspension and has linked his followers to endorsement pages on Facebook, Instagram and Telegram=
Sweeney has created an automated Twitter page called @ElonJet to keep his followers updated on Musk’s whereabouts.
Twitter followers will be met with a suspended account page, when they search for @ElonJet, instead of updates on Musk’s whereabouts.
Internal company messages shared with Sweeney by an “anonymous Twitter employee” reflected that the @elonjet account had been “limited/severely restricted visibility” as of December 2.
A screenshot from what it claimed was an internal Slack channel showed Ella Irwin, the appointee to replace Yoel Roth as Twitter’s new head of trust and safety, asking a ‘Team’ to ‘apply strong VF to @elonjet immediately’.
‘VF’ stands for ‘visibility filtering’, which blacklists or ‘shadow bans’ certain accounts by protecting their content from other users. That term is used by Twitter employees internally.
Some users called Musk a “hypocrite” after he made promises shortly after the $44 billion acquisition that he was committed to “free speech.”
“My commitment to free speech even extends to not banning the account that follows my plane, even though that is a direct risk to personal safety,” he said in November.
In 2016, Elon Musk bought a $66.5 million Gulfstream G650ER (model pictured), a favorite plane of the one percent, including Cristiano Ronaldo and Jeff Bezos.
Gulfstream G650ER jets (model pictured) feature folding tables stowed on the side of the aircraft that can be combined to form a large dining table to feed any guests on board
Sweeney’s concerns about the suspension stemmed from an online conversation he had with his idol last year when Musk asked him to stop tracking his plane.
In November 2021, the South African-Canadian-American mogul contacted Sweeney and offered the coder $5,000 to delete his plane tracking account, citing security concerns as the main reason for his reluctance to share his location publicly on all time.
However, Sweeney turned down the four-figure offer, instead making his own demands: a $50,000 payment and an internship or a Tesla Model 3, according to screenshots of their conversation shared online at the time.
Now that Musk has broken the bank to become the CEO of Twitter by buying all of the company’s shares at $54.20 a share, Sweeney said he may increase his offer.
“It would definitely have to be a good deal now, because it’s been around so long,” Sweeney added. “Definitely a Tesla, fully paid for and all.”
Elon Musk suspended Sweeney’s account, but the 19-year-old had predicted the move and has linked his followers to endorsement pages on Facebook, Instagram and Telegram.
Sweeney’s concerns about having his popular @ElonJet page removed are based on an online conversation he had with Musk in November 2021.
The teen has also consistently faced criticism online for sharing Musk’s travels.
He once revealed how he received a series of “really abusive” messages from Musk fans questioning the morality of his page’s activity since its creation two years ago.
“There are some on Twitter who don’t like what I’m doing,” Sweeney once told The Independent.
“I get rude DMs, but the really bad ones I report, and the accounts eventually get deleted.”
After Musk bought Twitter, he shared his vision for what’s to come via a company statement: “Free speech is the foundation of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the square in the digital city where discuss issues vital to the future of humanity”.
He also said at the time that he planned to improve Twitter by adding subscription offers, adding new features like the ‘edit’ button, sharing more transparency into the platform’s algorithms, and removing spam bots.