Elon Musk has declared that he will file a lawsuit against the person who manages a Twitter account that tracks his private jet because it puts his son in danger. More than half a million people follow the @ElonJet account, which was suspended on Wednesday.
A BBC story claims that the account’s 20-year-old owner Jack Sweeney used publicly accessible flight-tracking data to tweet each time Musk’s aircraft took off and landed.
On Twitter, Musk said that Sweeney and others are now the target of legal action. “Last night, car carrying [his son] lil X in LA was followed by crazy stalker (thinking it was me), who later blocked car from moving and climbed onto hood,” he tweeted.
He also stated that accounts that reveal users’ actual whereabouts will be suspended since they “violate physical safety”.
Despite confirming the suspension of the account on his personal Twitter account, Sweeney later denied that the incident was connected to his account.
Florida college student Sweeney provided CNN with a screenshot of a notification from Twitter stating that the account had been permanently banned for breaking the social media platform’s rules after a “careful review.”
Notably, Sweeney manages a dozen additional accounts for tracking the private flights of a number of affluent Americans, including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg.
On Wednesday afternoon, many of those accounts—including one tracking planes connected to Russian President Vladimir Putin and another keeping an eye on celebrity jets—appeared to have been suspended from Twitter as well.
Musk has already expressed his displeasure with the @ElonJet account. He once gave Sweeney a big amount of 5000 dollars to erase it, but then withdrew his offer since he felt it was wrong to charge for the account’s closure.
Musk most recently promised to keep it running even though it posed a “direct personal safety risk” a month ago.
However, Musk tweeted on Wednesday evening: “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.”
Twitter’s Help Center has tweeted an updated media policy that begins: “You may not publish or post other people’s private information without their express authorization and permission.”
