Jack Sweeney, the college student and creator of the banned @ElonJet Twitter account that tracked the movements of Elon Musk’s personal jet, has now launched the tracking project on Meta’s rival platform, Threads. “ElonJet has arrived to Threads!” Sweeney posted to the new @elonmusksjet account on Thursday. As of Monday, July 10th, the Threads account currently has 80,000 followers.
Sweeney addressed his second posting on the @elonmusksjet Threads account directly to Mark Zuckerberg, asking the Meta founder if he can remain on the platform. Sweeney includes a shoutout in the Threads bio of @elonmusksjet to the @zuckerbergjet account dedicated to tracking the location of Zuckerberg’s private jet. That account hasn’t posted any live information yet, but Sweeney has been actively tracking the movements of Zuckerberg’s jet across Meta’s Facebook and Instagram services for some time.
The account tracking Musk’s jet already appears to have been suspended and subsequently restored on both Threads and Instagram (where it’s been active for months) in the last few days.
Elon Musk suspended the @ElonJet Twitter account in December last year claiming that the tracker was a “direct personal safety risk.” Prior to this suspension, Musk said he wouldn’t ban the account as part of his “commitment to free speech.” Sweeney also runs several other trackers on Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky that monitor the flight paths of private jets for notables like Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Jeff Bezos, and Kim Kardashian. These automated “bot” accounts created by Sweeney pull together publicly available air travel data to chart the locations of the aircraft. The Twitter accounts associated with these trackers were also suspended.
Prior to his @ElonJet Twitter account being suspended, Sweeney once rejected Musk’s $5,000 offer to remove the tracker, requesting that the billionaire increase the offer to $50,000 and provide him with an internship. By calling out Zuckerberg, Sweeney seems to be goading the Meta CEO into taking similar action.
Shortly after Sweeney’s @ElonJet Twitter account was suspended last year, Musk tweeted, “Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation. This includes posting links to sites with real-time location info.” Twitter’s private information and media policy was also updated in December to specify that sharing publicly available location information is only permitted after a “reasonable time has elapsed” — which allowed Sweeney to create a new Twitter account to track Musk’s jet with a 24-hour delay.
Meta’s recently launched Threads platform appears to be the most significant Twitter rival to date, having amassed 100 million users just days after its release. And that’s without the app being available in the Europe Union yet while it seeks regulatory approval under the EU’s data privacy legislation. Sweeney’s decision to resurrect his real-time Elon jet tracker on Threads could further inflame tensions between the two social media giants. Twitter has already threatened to sue Meta, claiming that Threads was created using Twitter’s trade secrets and intellectual property, and Musk and Zuckerberg appear to be serious about fighting each other in a cage match.
Source : The Verge
