Twitter suspends account of college student tracking Musk's private jet
San Francisco, California - Twitter has suspended an account that previously tracked the private jet of company CEO Elon Musk.
Apparently, tracking the new CEO is a no-go.
College student Jack Sweeney had notoriously created and run several Twitter accounts that used automated bots to analyze and publish publicly available flight data for private jets of the world's VIPs, most notably Russian bigwigs and billionaire Musk.
Sweeney's fleet of Twitter accounts detailed distance travelled, cost of fuel, CO2 emissions, and of course, where the planes and choppers flew.
Yet, Musk explained in a tweet on Wednesday evening that Sweeney's main account, which had been deactivated a few hours earlier, had violated the social media platform's user guidelines.
Twitter Safety updated its terms of service on Wednesday night, prohibiting sharing "information that would reveal a person’s location, regardless if this information is publicly available."
Musk said, "Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation."
Sweeney's ban may directly stem from an incident Musk detailed on his account in which his son "was followed by a crazy stalker" on Tuesday night. The billionaire seemed to pin the blame on Sweeney, saying "legal action is being taken against Sweeney & organizations who supported harm to my family."
In November, Musk announced that he was so committed to freedom of speech since his takeover of the platform that he allowed Sweeney's account even though it posed a risk to his safety – despite his relationship to freedom of speech being complicated.
Now there's been a turnaround, as Sweeney has been added to a slew of banned accounts.
Cover photo: Collage: 123RF/malp & REUTERS