The college student who tracks Elon Musk's private jet was apparently permanently banned by Twitter on Wednesday, according to an email he shared with Insider.
Jack Sweeney told Insider on Wednesday that he was notified his personal account had been banned by Twitter several hours after the social media company took down his account that tracks Musk's jet, @ElonJet. His more than 30 other accounts that track celebrities' private jet travel — including Mark Zuckerberg, Donald Trump, and Kim Kardashian — also were suspended several hours after @ElonJet.
"I really didn't think he'd suspend my personal account," Sweeney told Insider, speaking about Twitter honcho Elon Musk. "I didn't think he'd do anything because of all the media attention he'd get."
Several hours after Sweeney's personal account was banned, his Musk-tracking account was reactivated. His personal account and other jet-tracking accounts appeared to remain suspended. It wasn't clear what led to this change, though Twitter posted around the same time what it said was a new policy to ban the posting of someone's live location in most cases.
Earlier in the afternoon, Insider was interviewing Sweeney about his jet-tracking account's ban when Sweeney realized his personal account also had been banned. He got the email from Twitter that confirmed his personal account's ban while he was on the phone with Insider.
"This guy is fucking ridiculous — my God," Sweeney said of Musk after he realized all 34 of his jet-tracking accounts had been banned. "My head's just going nuts right now."
Sweeney said he was not notified prior to his jet-tracking account suspensions, but received the email from Twitter on Wednesday afternoon regarding his personal account, which had more than 150,000 followers. He shared the email with Insider. The social media site said his personal account had been suspended for violating its rules against "platform manipulation and spam."
Hours before his personal account was banned, Sweeney had tweeted that he wanted the $8 back that he'd paid for Twitter Blue on his @ElonJet account, which had nearly 500,000 followers. Sweeney said he hasn't decided what he'll do next. He said he was mostly in disbelief. He said he plans to continue to promote the accounts and had already appealed the @ElonJet suspension with Twitter.
Sweeney said he's more motivated than ever to keep sharing the whereabouts of Musk's jet on other platforms, including Instagram, Discord, and Mastodon — a Twitter competitor that he signed up for within hours of learning of his Twitter suspension.
"I mean, fuck this guy," Sweeney said of Musk. "This is ridiculous. My personal account doesn't even track the planes. I'm going full-blast."
Neither Twitter nor Musk immediately responded to Insider's request for comment on this story. But in a response to another user's tweet praising the shutdown of the jet-tracking account, Musk tweeted a reply: "Real-time posting of someone else's location violates doxxing policy, but delayed posting of locations are ok," he said.
Earlier this week, Sweeney said in a Twitter thread that he learned from an anonymous Twitter employee his account had been shadow-banned, or partially blocked without his knowledge. Sources familiar with the matter confirmed this to Insider.
Musk had expressed concern in the past regarding how Sweeney's jet-tracking account, @elonjet, could affect his personal safety, but said in November that he wouldn't 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," the billionaire tweeted a week or so after he bought Twitter.
When Musk first offered to buy Twitter, Sweeney said he thought it was likely that Musk would try to shut down the account. The 20-year-old college student turned down a $5,000 offer from Musk to take down the account last year after the billionaire called the account a "security risk" and said he didn't want to be "shot by a nutcase."
