Business

Twitter Suspends @ElonJet, the Account Tracking Musk’s Private Flights

A Twitter account tracking Elon Musk's private jet has been banned from the platform despite Musk's promises to leave the account alone.

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Elon Musk in suit and patterned scarf
Elon Musk previously offered to pay $5,000 to shut down the account. (Photo by Patrick Pleul/picture alliance via Getty Images)

A popular Twitter account tracking the location of Elon Musk’s private jet has been suspended from the platform, despite Musk’s promises not to ban the account.

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“My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk,” said Musk in a Nov. 6 tweet, a few weeks after he completed the $44 billion acquisition of Twitter.

Private jet tracking accounts on Twitter typically use public data from plane transponders in order to produce automated posts on the whereabouts of private flights.

 

The account tracking Musk, called ElonJet, has been active since June 2020 and accumulated more than half a million followers. However, ElonJet was suspended as of today (Dec. 14), according to a tweet from Jack Sweeney, a University of Central Florida student running the account.
A few days earlier, Sweeney, 20, tweeted that he believed ElonJet had been shadowbanned, meaning his posts purposefully were being hidden from users’ feeds. He also included alleged screenshots of internal Twitter slack channels discussing the need to apply visibility filtering on the ElonJet account.

Musk previously offered Sweeney $5,000 to shut down the account for security reasons, which the student rejected. Sweeney also runs other accounts following celebrity jets used by public figures like Vladimir Putin, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates.

Twitter Suspends @ElonJet, the Account Tracking Musk’s Private Flights
Filed Under: Business, Jack Sweeney, blocked, location tracking, private jets, Elon Musk, Twitter