Musk Sues ElonJet, Suspends Its Twitter Account

Elon Musk jet
Illustration: Fossbytes / Priye Rai

A person in Florida creates Twitter bots that track celebrity’s plane journeys. His name is Jack Sweeney, and he has multiple Twitter accounts dedicated to monitoring flights. He also tracks Elon Musk, or, tracked Musk until yesterday. Twitter has now suspended the bot’s account, and Musk also sued ElonJet.

Even Jack Sweeney’s personal account didn’t survive the wrath of Twitter. The company branded it as a clear breach of the updated privacy policy which states that “You may not publish or post other people’s private information without their express authorization and permission.”

Musk Sues ElonJet, but why?

JackSweeny’s ElonJet account published each and every flight Musk took. Musk asked him to stop tracking his account and publishing them on Twitter. On a separate occasion, he even asked ElonJet to take $5000 and stop doing it. This was back when Musk didn’t own Twitter but had begun buying Twitter shares in bulk.

Six months later, Musk now owns Twitter. Twitter’s updated privacy policy asks users not to share the private information of others, and doing so will result in an account suspension. Jack Sweeney’s plane tracking account was suspended a few days back but was then restored. He even expressed his joy about the account restoration.

But Musk Sued ElonJet because he believes that the excessive tracking and disbursal of the information on Twitter led to a stalking incident with his son Lil X. The pursuers followed his son’s car, thinking that Musk was in it, and even blocked it multiple times and finally climbed on the hood. But Sweeney says that there is no link between his plane tracking and the incident.

flying a plane in antarctica
Image: evaint.com

Whatever the case may be, compromising someone’s safety isn’t a good thing. Although flight records are available in the public domain, disclosing them to the masses is a different thing. But if someone uses that information to create bots and make it easy to understand someone’s flight history, it becomes a mild security risk. Sweeney will now have to look for legal counsel to save himself from Musk’s lawsuit.

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