Persistent Jack Sweeney brings @ElonJet (but delayed) back to Twitter • TechCrunch

More than a week after being banned from Twitter, Jack Sweeney, the University of Central Florida sophomore who has been hurting alongside Elon Musk for at least a year, has a new account on the platform . Called @ElonJetNexDaythe hours-old account tracks Elon Musk’s private jet, but with a 24-hour delay.

Whether this is the final chapter of an ongoing story remains to be seen, but you have to give it to Sweeney; it is persistent.

Two years ago, the 20-year-old started a Twitter account that used public data to automatically map flights on Musk’s private jet, @ElonJet. Musk asked Sweeney in January through a direct message on the platform to take him down in exchange for $5,000. “It’s a security risk,” Musk reportedly wrote to Sweeney. “I don’t like the idea of ​​being shot by a crackpot.” When Sweeney only half asked for a Model 3 or $50,000 instead, Musk apparently ghosted Sweeney, but he clearly didn’t forget about him.

Instead, Sweeney made headlines on a very busy day last week after Musk, now owner of Twitter, ban the account, costing Sweeney 530,000 subscribers. The impulse, Musk suggested on Twitter, was a car carrying his son X Æ A-12 who had been “followed by [a] crazy stalker “in Los Angeles.” Although there was no obvious connection between the account and the incident, Twitter alerted Sweeney shortly after that “after careful review” it was “determined that your account violated Twitter’s rules. “, without saying at the time what rules had been violated.

Then, Twitter continued to shut down other accounts, including Sweeney’s personal account (for violating Twitter’s rules against “platform manipulation and spamming”); other accounts run by Sweeney that tracked the air travel of other prominent figures, including Musk’s nemesis Mark Zuckerberg; and a day later many journalists who reported on Sweeney’s story, including Ryan Mac of The New York Times and Drew Harwell of The Washington Post. (`Some remain locked.)

Separately, Musk focused on Sweeney, tweeting, “Legal action is ongoing against Sweeney and the organizations that supported the harm done to my family.”

Sweeney continued the entire time to operate her social media accounts elsewhere. Last week he opened an account on new social media platform Mastadon which tracks Musk’s private jet in real time and has already amassed 67,000 followers; Sweeney also has pages on Facebook and Instagram that track the whereabouts of private jets, including Musk’s, which enjoy a large following.

And now he’s back on Twitter too, for now at least. Under its new rules, “sharing location information that is publicly available after a reasonable time so that the individual is no longer at risk of physical harm” is not a violation. With a 24-hour delay to report where Musk’s private jet traveled, @ElonJetNexDay seems to fall within the limits of security settings recently set by Twitter.

Still, it’s easy to interpret the account as Sweeney thumbing his nose at Musk, who has wielded his power as Twitter’s new owner erratically almost since the day he hauled a sink into Twitter’s corporate headquarters. the company in San Francisco at the end of October to make a joke about its takeover. . (“let it sink in. »

Even Musk’s dedicated supporters on the platform seem exhausted from all the drama. When Musk asked them in a survey on Sunday whether he should step down as leader of the social media site, the vast majority of respondents said he should. Musk has since said he will step down as CEO once he finds “someone dumb enough to take the job!”