Gone are the days when celebrities could fly without knowing their location — at least for billionaires like Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg For the rich.
Jack Sweeney, 19, became an overnight sensation after his Twitter account @ElonJet went viral. The account, which has more than 470,000 followers, uses a bot to automatically track the location of Musk’s private jet.
Sweeney told that some billionaires are easier to track than others. “In Elon Musk, it’s registered to a SpaceX subsidiary: Falcon Landing. Mark Zuckerberg has a bit of a hard time. I’ve only recently found his real person.”
Sweeney launched the ElonJet account in June 2020 and has since started tracking celebrities like Tom Cruise and Jay Z, politicians like Presidents Biden and John Kerry, and companies like Pfizer, ExxonMobil, and Costco. machine.
“Originally, following Elon Musk was just out of interest because I thought he was a cool guy at companies like Tesla and SpaceX,” Sweeney said. “It’s interesting to see where he’s going. You know, he’s either in Austin or Brownsville doing all kinds of jobs. It’s crazy to see where they’re going. They’re just trying to be as efficient as possible and do everything as fast as possible.”
The account quickly gained more attention, including from the Tesla CEO himself.
According to Sweeney, Musk initially asked him to delete the ElonJet account as a safety precaution. He even asked Sweeney how it worked. Ultimately, Musk offered Sweeney $5,000 to download the account, and Sweeney asked for $50,000 in return.
However, the negotiations came to nothing, saving the ElonJet founder a bit of internet fame.
“It took a few weeks, and [Musk] said it didn’t feel right to not pay to take it down anymore,” Sweeney said.
Although Musk rejected Sweeney’s counter-offer, other Twitter users and Musk fans have reached out to Sweeney to ask him to delete the account. They argue that it serves no practical purpose other than revealing personal information.
In a pinned message to ElonJet’s profile, Sweeney assured his followers, “This account has every right to post jets’ whereabouts, ADS-B data is public, and every aircraft in the world must have A retweeter, even data found on other sites by AF1’s (@AirForceTrack) Twitter Policy Statement may be shared here.”
