Jack Sweeney, the inventor behind the account that monitors Elon Musk’s private jet in real-time, has transitioned to Threads, a platform designed to compete with Twitter, following his suspension from Twitter last year.
“ElonJet has arrived to Threads!” declared Sweeney’s initial post on Thursday from the account handle @elonmusksjet, which boasted over 21,000 followers by Saturday morning.
This account, known as ElonJet, has been tracking the flights of Musk’s private aircraft using publicly available data.
In December, Twitter, which is owned by Musk, suspended the ElonJet account after the billionaire voiced concerns about a “crazy stalker” following his son, which led him to consider legal measures against Sweeney.
Musk previously tweeted in November that his dedication to free speech “extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk.”
Sweeney, a 20-year-old student at the University of Central Florida, mentioned in December that Ella Irwin, who serves as Twitter’s Vice President of trust and safety, urged for the account to be less visible and filtered for users.
In various interviews, Sweeney has disclosed that he turned down a $5,000 (approximately Rs. 4 lakh) proposition from Musk in 2021 to deactivate his bot account.
Threads, owned by Meta, made a notable entrance into the social media landscape, rapidly attracting millions of users, including well-known figures like Kim Kardashian, Jennifer Lopez, and Democratic US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, leveraging Twitter’s recent instability following a series of controversial decisions by Musk.
At the time of publication, neither Sweeney, Twitter, nor Meta had responded to requests for comments from Reuters.
© Thomson Reuters 2023
