Twitter has suspended several Twitter accounts that use publicly available flight information to track the location of private jets, including the plane used by Twitter owner Elon Musk.
The account @ElonJet was created in 2020 by Florida college student Jack Sweeney to track the takeoffs and landings of Musk’s private jet. Musk wasn’t happy with account but said in November he wouldn’t ban it, citing his commitment to free speech.
But on Wednesday, the account suddenly disappeared from the service, replaced by the message “account suspended” for violating Twitter’s rules, along with Sweeney’s personal account. The action seemed to come around the same time that Twitter updated its privacy policy to prohibit posting or linking to information about a person’s physical location or travel route, regardless of whether the information is publicly available.
Musk explained the new policy in a response to a comment about the policy change.
“Real-time posting of someone else’s location violates doxxing policy, but delayed posting of locations are ok,” Musk said in a tweet Wednesday afternoon.
@ElonJet was briefly restored Wednesday afternoon before being suspended again. Other accounts created by Sweeney to track the private planes of Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates were also suspended, as was Sweeney’s personal account.
Earlier this year, Musk reportedly offered Sweeney $5,000 to take down the Twitter account, but the 20-year-old student refused, saying $5,000 wasn’t enough for the satisfaction he received from his work.
Sweeney couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. Twitter, which no longer has a communications department, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
