Jack Sweeney, the college student behind the banned @ElonJet Twitter account, which monitored the movements of Elon Musk’s personal jet, has now migrated his tracking project to Meta’s rival platform, Threads. Sweeney announced the arrival of ElonJet on Threads through a post on the new @elonmusksjet account. As of Monday, July 10th, the Threads account already has a following of 80,000 users.
Sweeney Challenges Mark Zuckerberg
In his second post on the @elonmusksjet Threads account, Sweeney directly addressed Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Meta, questioning whether he could continue using the platform. Sweeney even included a shoutout in the Threads bio of @elonmusksjet to the @zuckerbergjet account, which is dedicated to tracking the location of Zuckerberg’s private jet. Although the @zuckerbergjet account has not shared any real-time information yet, Sweeney has been actively monitoring the movements of Zuckerberg’s jet across Meta’s Facebook and Instagram services for some time.
The account that tracks Musk’s jet has seemingly been suspended and subsequently reinstated on both Threads and Instagram in the past few days. Elon Musk had previously suspended the @ElonJet Twitter account in December, citing concerns about personal safety. However, prior to the suspension, Musk had stated that he wouldn’t ban the account, as he believed in upholding free speech. Sweeney also manages several other tracking accounts on Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky, which monitor the flight paths of private jets belonging to notable individuals such as Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Jeff Bezos, and Kim Kardashian. These automated “bot” accounts, created by Sweeney, compile publicly available air travel data to track the locations of these aircraft. The associated Twitter accounts for these trackers have also been suspended.
Before his @ElonJet Twitter account was suspended, Sweeney declined Musk’s offer of $5,000 to remove the tracker, instead requesting a higher amount of $50,000 and an internship. By involving Zuckerberg in his actions, Sweeney appears to be provoking the Meta CEO to take similar measures.
After Sweeney’s @ElonJet Twitter account was suspended last year, Musk tweeted, “Any account revealing real-time location information of anyone will be suspended, as it is a violation of physical safety. This includes posting links to sites with real-time location info.” In December, Twitter updated its policy on private information and media, specifying that sharing publicly available location information is only allowed after a “reasonable time has elapsed.” This allowed Sweeney to create a new Twitter account to track Musk’s jet with a 24-hour delay.
Meta’s recently launched Threads platform has quickly become a notable rival to Twitter, amassing 100 million users within days of its release. However, the app is yet to be available in the European Union as it awaits regulatory approval under the EU’s data privacy legislation. Sweeney’s decision to revive his real-time Elon jet tracker on Threads could further intensify the tensions between the two social media giants. Twitter has already threatened to sue Meta, alleging that Threads was developed using Twitter’s trade secrets and intellectual property. Musk and Zuckerberg seem determined to engage in a fierce battle.
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