Tweeting again: Teenager restored to Twitter after ban for tracking Elon Musk flights
Christopher Hutton
Video Embed
A teenager banned from Twitter because he tracked Elon Musk’s flights has been restored to the site because he is now delaying the details by a day.
Jack Sweeney, the teenager behind @elonjet, created a new account over the weekend, @elonjetnextday. It continues to track Musk’s private airplane but delays the flight data by a day, which upholds Twitter’s real-time tracking policies. The new account was set up after Musk banned the original account, which led to several journalists being banned, too, and questions being raised about Musk’s content moderation.
‘BE OPEN TO LEARNING:’ DEMOCRATIC LAWMAKER BLASTED FOR DELETING TWEET AFTER ELON MUSK FACT-CHECK
The new account, established on Dec. 22, has posted about Musk’s flights five times. Sweeney claims that the account has, however, been shadow-banned. Twitter continues to ban links to Sweeney’s tracker on other platforms.
Musk suspended the account on Dec. 14 after Twitter updated its rules to suspend accounts “dedicated to sharing someone’s live location.” Sweeney and Musk have clashed before, with Musk offering the college-age student $5,000 to close the account. Sweeney declined.
Musk also claimed that an unknown person was stalking his family and alleged that the public release of flight data provided “assassination coordinates” that could be used to try and attack him. Police are investigating but have provided conflicting information about whether the alleged stalker followed the billionaire’s family.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Musk’s decision to ban @elonjet led to a wave of other bans, including the suspension of journalists and a temporary ban on links to third-party social media such as Mastodon and Facebook.
Sweeney’s tracker in real-time is on Mastodon.