The Twitter account that once provided real-time updates on the location of Elon Musk’s private jet, before it was suspended by Musk, then forced to post time-delayed information, has now landed at Twitter rival Threads.
Jack Sweeney, the University of Central Florida student who created the account, reintroduced the real-time tracker Thursday and has already amassed more than 14,000 followers. So far, though, either Musk has stayed on the ground or Sweeney has yet to hook up the bot that uses public data to reflect the aircraft’s location. No updates have been posted.
Post by @elonmusksjetView on Threads
In his personal account, Sweeney said the posts will not be delayed, as they are on Twitter. (After the account was suspended by Musk, Twitter changed its private information policy to prohibit users from sharing live locations of individuals. The tracker eventually resurfaced, with a 24-hour delay on Musk’s flight data.)
In addition to Musk, Sweeney has set up a tracker for Mark Zuckerberg’s jet on Threads. Another account, which tracked Donald Trump, Taylor Swift, Kim Kardashian, and other celebrities, has not yet transitioned to the new service.
Sweeney told Fortune last year he was motivated to track celebrities’ private air travel in part to expose the hypocrisy of those who claim to care about fossil fuel use and climate change.
“They say one thing and then do another,” he said. “They are just showing off, but yeah, they shouldn’t be when it is wasteful, and it’s just like, ‘Look at me.’”
The story of the Elon’s Jet Twitter account is a convoluted one. Sweeney began tracking Musk’s jet, he has said, because he was a fan. The data is gathered from ADS-B exchange, a larger hobbyist site that assembles publicly available data from the transponders of different aircraft.
Last January, Musk messaged Sweeney, asking him to take the tracker down and offering $5,000 to delete the account, saying he didn’t want “crazy people” tracking his flights. Sweeney rejected the offer, and suggested Musk could pay him $50,000 instead or offer him an internship in return for taking down the app. Musk declined. In November, however, he vowed he would not shut down the account, tweeting, “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 following month, though, the account disappeared suddenly. Later that day, after Twitter issued the new policy barring live location updates, it returned, only to be banned again within hours. (Indeed, it’s still absent today.) A delayed version of the tracker was then started, under a separate (but similar) name—ElonJetbutDelayed.
Later in December, Musk threatened to sue Sweeney.
That suit, says Sweeney, never happened, though. And he referenced it Thursday after reports emerged Musk was planning to sue Threads over “systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation” of Twitter’s trade secrets.
“[Remember] when Elon said he would sue me. Just another empty threat,” Sweeney tweeted.
