Suspended Twitter account that tracked Elon Musk’s jet moves to Threads
09/07/2023

A Twitter account that was suspended for tracking Elon Musk's private jet in real-time has found a new home on the rival app Threads. Jack Sweeney, a student at the University of Central Florida, launched his flight tracking project on Threads and asked Mark Zuckerberg to let him continue without interference. Sweeney had to stop his real-time updates on Twitter last year. Celebrating his return, Sweeney expressed his hope for Twitter to decline and mentioned being hindered on the platform. He shares details about Musk's jet on Instagram and also takes jabs at Musk on his Threads account, referencing Musk's suggestion of suing Meta for allegedly appropriating Twitter's platform.

Meta and Twitter did not immediately respond to The Post's request for comment.

Sweeney's Twitter account was suspended in December 2022 after the platform said he violated a new rule against "doxxing real-time location info of anyone" — enforced after an alleged stalker tailed a vehicle carrying Musk's son.

Musk tweeted about the incident, and suggested Sweeney was to blame. The college student denied the allegation, and told The Post at the time: "That's a car [and not a plane]. And that supposed incident would have been 24 hours after the last tweet from my account."

Since then, Sweeney has been operating a different account on Twitter posting the location of the jet with a 24 hour delay. The real-time posts are still available on rival social media sites Facebook, Instagram, Telegram and Mastodon.

Sweeney began tracking Musk's plane in 2020, and before his suspension, his @ElonJet account grew to nearly 500,000 followers.

He also began tracking the locations of jets for former President Donald Trump, Taylor Swift, Kim Kardashian, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The location of the jets are posted via publicly available information.

Sweeney told Insider he plans to continue making manual updates to his Threads account for now, but hopes Meta will allow him to return to auto-posting.

While he's happy on Threads, Sweeney admitted he has one gripe with the social media site.

"The only thing that I'm unhappy about with Instagram and Threads is that I can't get my hands on the @ElonJet handle even though no one has it," Sweeney said. 

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