Jack Sweeney, the college student behind the Twitter account @ElonJet, has moved his platform to Threads after he was banned last year. Elon Musk banned Sweeney’s account from tracking his private flights and threatened to take legal action against him, claiming that tracking his flights put his son at risk.
In his first post on his Threads account, @elonmusksjet, Sweeney wrote: “ElonJet has arrived to Threads!” In a separate post, Sweeney appeared to reference his ban on Twitter, and asked: “@zuck will I be allowed to stay?”
Advertisement
Sweeney has continued to track Musk’s flights on Instagram despite the lawsuit threat that never came to fruition. Sweeney went so far as to repost a follower’s comment, calling the suit an “empty threat.” At the time of writing, Sweeney’s Threads account has already garnered 15,000 followers since the app launched on Wednesday night.
Meta did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment about Sweeney’s account and whether it goes against company policy.
Advertisement
Advertisement
It isn’t clear whether creating an account to track Musk’s movements on his private jet goes against Threads’ terms and conditions. Sweeney’s Twitter account was suspended on December 15 after revealing Musk’s publicly available tracking information, but Musk said that after a careful review, Sweeney’s account would be permanently suspended “as it is a physical safety violation.”
Musk said in the tweet: “Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation. This includes posting links to sites with real-time location info.” Supporters of Sweeney have pointed out that he’s just sharing public information.
Sweeney was in charge of numerous accounts on Twitter that tracked personal flights of wealthy individuals including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Russian President Vladimir Putin. All accounts were banned alongside Sweeney’s ElonJet account.
Following the ban, Twitter restricted all users from revealing people’s live locations by updating its private information policy which says: “Sharing someone’s private information online without their permission, sometimes called doxxing, is a breach of their privacy and of the Twitter Rules.” It continued: “Sharing private information can pose serious safety and security risks for those affected and can lead to physical, emotional, and financial hardship.”
Advertisement
Sweeney commented on his switch to Threads, telling Business Insider, “The only thing that I’m unhappy about with Instagram and Threads is that I can’t get my hands on the @ElonJet handle even though no one has it.” Now that he has a home on Threads, he told the outlet, “I’m honestly hoping Twitter dies.”
Services Marketplace – Listings, Bookings & Reviews