It’s been a rollercoaster week for Jack Sweeney, the 20-year-old University of Central Florida sophomore behind the @elonjet Twitter account.
Twitter this week suspended the account, then briefly brought it back, before permanently suspending the account that used publicly available data to track the billionaire’s air travel and had amassed more than 500,000 followers.
Musk has imposed new guidance for Twitter users, including no sharing of anyone’s current location. That guidance was cited in Musk’s decision to suspend the accounts of multiple journalists who cover the social media platform and Musk, including reporters from The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and other publications.
Musk has accused reporters of sharing information about his location, which he described as “basically assassination coordinates.”
“Same doxxing rules apply to ‘journalists’ as to everyone else,” Musk tweeted Thursday.
“Doxxing” is a term that typically means sharing someone’s identity, address or other personal information online.
With the account @elonjet being permanently suspended from Twitter, USA TODAY asked Sweeney about the ban and his reaction.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. USA TODAY has reached out to Twitter for comment.
Why did you start the @ElonJet account?
I was a fan of him and Tesla and SpaceX. You know, that’s what made me originally go into aerospace engineering as a major. Yeah, I thought Teslas were cool and rockets and all that.
Walk me through this week, how you found out @ElonJet was suspended. What did that process look like?
I wake up Wednesday morning, and my account is suspended. I just found out other people were already talking about it. And then throughout the day, the rest of my accounts get suspended, and then at some point @ElonJet got unsuspended for an hour or two, and then it got resuspended.
Musk has raised security concerns about himself and his family. What’s your response to that?
I think there is a valid concern, but now he’s trying to say it’s private data.
And it’s all out there. It’s not like I’m hacking a system or anything. It’s all out there.
And if it’s a safety concern, than something further up…needs to be fixed with the (Federal Aviation Administration) and the (International Civil Aviation Organization)
Musk has also threatened legal action against you. What have you heard from him at this point?
Nothing besides those tweets.
So the only comments you’ve seen from him regarding your account, or you, are from his Twitter account?
Yeah, that’s it.
How are you planning to approach this moving forward?
I mean, right now, I’m just trying to let it all settle down because there’s too much going on. So no definitive actions or choices.
You started accounts that have tracked other folks, right? Can you tell me more about that?
So like there was about 30 of them, plus or minus a few. There’s a celebrity jets – you have like Taylor Swift, Kim Kardashian. All kinds of other billionaires. There’s also even accounts that don’t track people and their jets. It tracks like NASA aircraft or experimental aircraft.
