A Twitter account programmed to automatically post the movements of a private jet belonging to Twitter’s owner and CEO, Elon Musk, was suspended Wednesday.
The suspension of @elonjet caught the bot’s creator, 20-year-old University of Central Florida student Jack Sweeney, by surprise, Sweeney said by phone, especially since Musk previously tweeted that he would not remove the account.
“My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane even though that is a direct personal safety risk,” Musk posted on Nov. 6, shortly after he purchased Twitter in late October.
“That’s not a good move, people are gonna look at him horribly,” Sweeney, of Clermont, said of the suspension. “He’s not making the best choices here to make his $44 billion purchase profitable. ... He’s literally slipping backwards on what he said.”
Sweeney began tracking the jet because he was an admirer and fan of Musk and his companies Tesla and SpaceX. The tracking is done using public, open-source flight data provided by a network of hobbyists around the globe with roof-mounted antennas.
“I still think he’s doing good stuff,” Sweeney said when asked if he’s still a Musk fan, “but maybe a little less after this.”
Sweeney said he was creating an account on Mastodon, a social media site some have promoted as an alternative to Twitter under Musk’s controversial leadership. He added that he still has accounts tracking Musk’s jet on Instagram and Facebook, and plans to develop a website that will live track Musk’s jet as well.
Sweeney’s dozens of other Twitter bots that track the jets of other notable people, such as Bill Gates and Jay-Z, and companies, such as Publix and Walmart, are still operating.
He took down the Twitter account tracking a jet owned by billionaire Dallas Maverick’s owner Mark Cuban after Cuban direct-messaged him offering tickets to a game. Sweeney said Cuban recently made good on his offer. Sweeney sat four rows from the court.