Before the ban, Musk’s private jet’s movements were monitored by ElonJet, run by 20-year-old university student Jack Sweeney, using information that was in the public domain.
Elon Musk threatened legal action against Twitter Inc. after the company deactivated an account that was live-tracking his private plane on the social media platform. The entrepreneur claimed his kid had been unintentionally being tracked by a “crazy stalker.”
The account was suspended barely one month after Musk, who paid $44 billion to acquire Twitter in October, declared that he was committed to free expression and would not restrict the account. Prior to the suspension, Jack Sweeney, a 20-year-old university student, who runs ElonJet, had been following the movements of Musk’s private plane using information that was in the public domain.
At the time of reporting, Sweeney’s other accounts were also suspended. Reuters asked Twitter and Sweeney for responses, but neither party provided any.
After stating that the sharing of “live location information” was against its policy, Twitter temporarily reinstated the “bot,” or automated, account before once more removing it. In a tweet from November, Musk had claimed that, despite the clear risk to his personal safety, his dedication to free expression “extends even to not blocking the account following my plane.”
Musk declared on Wednesday that any account that divulges a person’s current whereabouts would be suspended since it violates physical safety. A person or organisation gets “doxed” when private information about them, such their home address or phone number, is made public. Posting areas someone visited with a short delay is OK, according to Musk, because it poses no safety risks.
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.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 15, 2022
Posting locations someone traveled to on a slightly delayed basis isn’t a safety problem, so is ok.
Last night, car carrying lil X in LA was followed by crazy stalker (thinking it was me), who later blocked car from moving & climbed onto hood.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 15, 2022
Legal action is being taken against Sweeney & organizations who supported harm to my family.
Along with linking the monitoring accounts to the harassment, the billionaire also tweeted that one of his sons, little X, had experienced it. He said that a psychotic stalker had followed the car transporting Little X around LA the night before, thinking it was him. The stalker then stopped the car from moving and climbed upon the hood.
“Legal action is being initiated against Sweeney and the groups that encouraged violence to my family,” the statement reads. The suspension “surprises many people because he openly declared he wouldn’t do it,” Sweeney, a student at the University of Central Florida who also runs similar bot accounts following Musk’s flight on Facebook, Instagram, and Telegram, told BuzzFeed.
It only demonstrates how flexible the rules are, in his words, for anybody they like. Ella Irwin, Twitter’s vice president of trust and safety, asked that the account be filtered and made less accessible to users, Sweeney tweeted on Saturday.
Sweeney said in prior talks with the media that Musk offered him $5,000 to close the account in 2021, but he declined the offer. The rich internet titans Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates’ Twitter accounts that tracked their flights were also suspended.
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