The college student who tracks Elon Musk’s private jet says the Twitter CEO ‘seems really bothered’ by his account

“The college student who manages a Twitter account that tracks Elon Musk’s private jet has observed that the Tesla CEO appears to be bothered by the account, based on comments he made during his recent BBC News interview.

During the interview, Musk spoke with BBC correspondent James Clayton about various topics, including his $44 billion takeover of Twitter, issues related to his companies, and the banning of the @ElonJet account in December. When asked about the @ElonJet account, Musk responded with, “What about it?”

Clayton commented that the decision to ban the account managed by the college student, named Sweeney, was controversial, and questioned whether Musk was exerting excessive control. Musk denied this, stating, “No, it’s just that real-time doxxing is not allowed.”

As per the Cambridge Dictionary, doxxing refers to the act of finding or publishing private information about an individual online. Sweeney’s Twitter account utilized bots to collect and post publicly available flight data, which could also be accessed through ADS-B Exchange.

During the interview, Clayton pointed out that Sweeney was using publicly available information. In response, Musk stated, “No, actually it’s not true. He was using non-public information combined with public information.” However, Musk did not specify what non-public information Sweeney had utilized.

Sweeney, in a statement to Insider on Thursday, mentioned, “His evident annoyance with ElonJet only underscores the significance of ElonJet. He simply does not want it to be so visible.” Sweeney also remarked that it was “probably” accurate that he was “living rent-free” in Musk’s mind.

In early 2022, Musk made an offer to Sweeney, proposing to pay him $5,000 in exchange for discontinuing the sharing of flight information on the @ElonJet account. Sweeney responded by stating that he would cease the activity for $50,000, but Musk did not pursue the offer further.

Following the ban of the @ElonJet account, Sweeney resorted to tweeting flight data with a 24-hour delay on a new account called @ElonJetNextDay. This decision was made in order to comply with Twitter’s updated policy on private information, which prohibited the sharing of live location data of individuals.

Twitter took action against more than 30 other accounts that utilized public flight data to track private jets used by notable individuals, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Russian President Vladimir Putin. These accounts were also suspended by Twitter for their activity.

Information Source: BI

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