Elon Musk Blocks Kid On Twitter Who Refused To Shut Down Private Jet Tracker

A college kid who uses public information to track the whereabouts of Elon Musk’s private jet has been blocked by the billionaire, according to The Guardian. 

The story began last month when Musk reached out to 19-year-old Jack Sweeney, the mad genius behind the Twitter account, “Elon Musk’s Jet.” He created a Twitter bot that uses public data to track Musk’s private jet movements around the world. 

Musk offered Sweeny a measly $5k to remove the Twitter account. The kid responded by requesting $50k or a Tesla Model 3 though Musk never responded.

The billionaire told the kid he was concerned about “crazy people” tracking his location. When the two spoke on Twitter direct message several weeks ago, Elon Musk’s Jet account had 88k followers and has since added well over 200k more for a total of about 320k (as of Thursday afternoon). 

The Guardian first reported the development on Wednesday, saying, “Musk declined to pay and has now blocked Sweeney on Twitter as he plans to track even more celebrity private jets.” 

Even though Musk tried to payoff the kid to take down the Twitter tracking bot, Sweeny argues:

“This account has every right to post jet whereabouts, ADS-B data is public, every aircraft in the world is required to have a transponder, Even AF1 ( @AirForceTrack ) Twitter policy states data found on other sites is allowed to be shared here as well.

“If you want to complain to someone tell the ICAO to make a more privacy-focused ADS-B system. Taking down my account won’t fix the issue, my code is open-sourced others said they would recreate it anyway.”

“Taking down this account doesn’t stop someone determined from doing something bad they could still go to other websites.”

While Musk has blocked Sweeney’s Twitter account and denied the $50k payment, what will the billionaire try to do next to censor the college kid? 

As we noted before, the kid should sell the Twitter bot to hedge funds… 

Musk’s latest flight was on Tuesday. 

Landed near Brownsville, Texas, US. Apx. flt. time 45 Mins. pic.twitter.com/1j6y40p0XJ

— Elon Musk’s Jet (@ElonJet) February 2, 2022