Elon Musk claims he is suing the owner of a Twitter account “Jack Sweeney” that tracks his private jet because he believes it put his son in danger.
On Wednesday, the @ElonJet account, which has more than 500,000 followers, was suspended.
Its 20-year-old owner Jack Sweeney tweeted each time Elon Musk’s aircraft took off and touched down using publicly accessible flight tracking data.
Mr. Musk claims that Mr. Sweeney and others are currently the targets of legal action.
“Last night, car carrying [his son] lil X in LA was followed by crazy stalker (thinking it was me), who later blocked car from moving and climbed onto hood,” he tweeted.
He added that any account revealing people’s real-time locations will be suspended “as it is a physical safety violation”.
When questioned by the BBC, Mr. Sweeney disputed that the occurrence was connected to his account.
It happens after he revealed the suspension of the profile on his own Twitter account on Wednesday.
Mr. Sweeney’s account appears to have been reinstated that evening. “Yes, I’m back,” he tweeted. It was again classified as suspended a short while afterward. Additionally, his personal account @JxckSweeney has been blocked.
A screenshot of a message from Twitter stating that it had performed a “careful assessment” and chosen to permanently ban the account for breaking its rules was shared by Mr. Sweeney, a college student in the state of Florida, with CNN.
The student is in control of other additional accounts that monitor the private flights of affluent Americans, including Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta.
On Wednesday afternoon
Many of those accounts—including one tracking planes connected to Russian President Vladimir Putin and another keeping an eye on celebrity jets—appeared to have been suspended from Twitter as well.
The @ElonJet account had long been an irritant for Mr. Musk, who allegedly once paid Mr. Sweeney $5,000 to have it deleted.
Mr. Musk ultimately told Mr. Sweeney that paying to have the account closed did not feel right, according to Mr. Sweeney’s statements to US media outlets.
And even though it was a month ago, Mr. Musk promised to keep it going.
But Mr. Musk tweeted on Wednesday evening: “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.”
Also Read: ‘Evil Elon’, Journalist Aaron Rupar, Aged 39, permanently banned from Twitter, His Wife and Family
Twitter’s Help Center has tweeted an updated media policy that begins: “You may not publish or post other people’s private information without their express authorization and permission.”
Mr. Musk has changed Twitter’s moderation procedures in a number of ways since becoming the reins of the company.
A few previously prohibited accounts have been reinstated by him, including the profile of former US President Donald Trump, which was prohibited following the uprising at the US Capitol on January 6.
According to the New York Times, the Tesla CEO has reduced Twitter’s workforce and ceased paying rent for parts of the company’s offices, including its San Francisco headquarters.
Investors have questioned whether his recent acquisition of Twitter has caused him to focus less on his electric vehicle company.
Who is Jack Sweeney? Age, Wiki
Jack Sweeney is an American programmer and businessman who was born in or around 2002. He rose to fame in 2022 for building Twitter bots that followed the private jets of notable people like Elon Musk and Russian billionaires.
Sweeney was a freshman studying information technology at the University of Central Florida at the start of 2022. He wants to pursue a career in software engineering. Sweeney revealed in a February 2022 interview with Bloomberg Wealth that he was starting a business called “Ground Control” that tracks the flight activities of well-known billionaires.
