Despite Elon Musk’s free speech pledge, Twitter bans account that tracked his jet

Despite Elon Musk’s free speech pledge, Twitter bans account that tracked his jet

Twitter has suspended an account that tracked the location of Elon Musk’s private jet. The suspension comes despite Musk last month tweeting, “My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk.”

The @ElonJet account was run by Jack Sweeney, a 20-year-old student at University of Central Florida, who used publicly available flight tracking information to build a Twitter bot that tweeted every time Musk’s Gulfstream took off and landed at an airport.

It is unclear what specifically led to the account’s suspension, but Sweeney confirmed to CNN on Wednesday morning the account had been banned. He shared a screenshot of a message he received from Twitter that read: “After careful review, we determined your account broke the Twitter rules. Your account is permanently suspended.”

The account’s last post showed Musk’s jet taking off from Oakland on Monday and landing in Los Angeles 48 minutes later.

The @ElonJet account had long been a thorn in Musk’s side and had built up more than 500,000 followers on Twitter. The account is still active on Facebook.

Before Musk acquired Twitter, the Tesla CEO offered Sweeney $5,000 to help prevent “crazy people” from tracking his flights. Sweeney countered by asking for $50,000, saying he could use the money for college and maybe a Tesla Model 3.

In an exchange in January, Musk said it didn’t feel right “to pay to shut this down,” according to messages viewed by CNN.

Earlier this week, Sweeney said that a Twitter employee told him the account had been shadow-banned — made invisible to most users — but hours later reported that the restriction had apparently been lifted.

When Musk announced his intention to buy Twitter, Sweeney posted links to his account on Instagram, Facebook, and Telegram. A post-Wednesday morning on the Instagram account reported that Musk flew from Los Angeles to Austin the previous night.