Elon Musk threatens legal action against Twitter account that tracked his jet

Elon Musk has threatened legal action against the Twitter account that used publicly available flight data to track his private jet, shortly after the account was suspended by the social media platform.

Despite a pledge by the social media platform’s new owner to keep it up because of his free speech principles, @elonjet was suspended on Twitter on Wednesday.

Then, hours later, Mr Musk brought back the jet-tracking account after imposing new conditions on all of Twitter’s users – no more sharing of anyone’s current location.

But shortly afterward, the account was suspended again after Mr Musk tweeted that a “crazy stalker” attacked a car in Los Angeles carrying his young son.

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He also threatened legal action against Jack Sweeney (20), the college sophomore and programmer who started the @elonjet flight-tracking account, and “organisations who supported harm to my family”.

It is not clear what legal action Mr Musk could take against Mr Sweeney for an account that automatically posted public flight information.

Before Wednesday, the account had more than 526,000 followers.

“He said this is free speech and he’s doing the opposite,” Mr Sweeney said in an interview with the Associated Press.

Mr Sweeney said he woke up on Wednesday to a flood of messages from people who saw that @elonjet was suspended and all its tweets had disappeared.

Started in 2020 when Mr Sweeney was a teenager, the account automatically posted the Gulfstream jet’s flights with a map and an estimate of the amount of jet fuel and carbon emissions it expended.

He logged into Twitter and saw a notice that the account was permanently suspended for breaking Twitter’s rules. But the note did not explain how it broke the rules.

Mr Sweeney said he immediately filed an online form to appeal the suspension. Later, his personal account was also suspended, with a message saying it violated Twitter’s rules “against platform manipulation and spam”.

And then hours later, the flight-tracking account was back again, before it was shut down anew. Mr Musk and Twitter’s policy team had sought to publicly explain on Wednesday that Twitter now has new rules.

“Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation,” Mr Musk tweeted.

“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.”

“Doxxing” refers to disclosing online someone’s identity, address, or other personal details.

For Mr Sweeney, it was the latest in a long-time tangle with the billionaire. The University of Central Florida student said Mr Musk last year sent him a private message offering $5,000 (€4,690) to take the jet-tracking account down, citing security concerns.

Mr Musk later stopped communicating to Mr Sweeney, who never deleted the account.

But after buying Twitter for $44 billion in late October, Mr Musk said he would let it stay. “My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk,” Mr Musk tweeted on November 6th.

Mr Sweeney ran similar “bot” accounts tracking other celebrities’ aeroplanes. For hours after the suspension of the @elonjet account, other Sweeney-run accounts tracking private jets used by Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and various Russian oligarchs were still live on Twitter.

But by later on Wednesday, Twitter suspended all of them, including Mr Sweeney’s personal account. He also operates accounts tracking Mr Musk’s jet on rival social platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment. Mr Musk has promised to eradicate automatically generated spam from the platform, but Twitter allows automated accounts that are labelled as such – as Mr Sweeney’s were. – AP