Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility
Despite Free Speech Pledge, Twitter Suspends Account That Tracked Musk Jet
gvw_ap_news
By Associated Press
Published 1 year ago on
December 14, 2022

Share

Twitter has suspended an account that used publicly available flight data to track Elon Musk’s private jet, despite a pledge by the social media platform’s new owner to keep it up because of his free speech principles.

Tweets from the widely-followed @elonjet account were no longer viewable Wednesday. The account had more than 526,000 followers as of Tuesday.

“Account suspended,” says a note that appears when clicking on the account’s handle. “Twitter suspends accounts that violate the Twitter Rules.”

Started in 2020 by then-teenage programmer Jack Sweeney, the account automatically posts the Gulfstream jet’s flights with a map and an estimate of the amount of jet fuel and carbon emissions it expended.

“My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk,” Musk tweeted on Nov. 6.

Sweeney runs similar “bot” accounts tracking other celebrities’ airplanes. His accounts tracking private jets used by Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and various Russian oligarchs were still on Twitter on Wednesday, as were his accounts tracking Musk’s jet on rival social platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.

Sweeney didn’t immediately return a request for comment Wednesday but on his personal Twitter account posted a screenshot showing a notice from Twitter that said @elonjet was permanently suspended. The note didn’t specify a reason for the permanent ban. Twitter didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Sweeney had days earlier accused Musk’s Twitter of using a filtering technique to hide his tweets, and revealed what he said were leaked internal communications showing a Twitter executive ordering her team to suppress the account’s reach. The Associated Press has not been able to independently verify those documents.

Musk has previously criticized that filtering technique — nicknamed “shadowbanning” — and alleged that it was unfairly used by Twitter’s past leadership to suppress right-wing accounts. He has said the new Twitter will continue to downgrade the reach of negative or hateful messages but will be more transparent about it.

In his push to loosen Twitter’s content restrictions, he’s reinstated other high-profile accounts that were permanently banned for breaking Twitter’s rules against hateful conduct, harmful misinformation or incitements of violence.

In the weeks since the Tesla CEO took over Twitter after buying it for $44 billion in late October, the @elonjet account has chronicled Musk’s many cross-country journeys from his home base near Tesla’s headquarters in Austin, Texas, to various California airports for his work at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters and his rocket company SpaceX.

It showed Musk flying to East Coast cities ahead of major events, and to New Orleans shortly before a Dec. 3 meeting there with French President Emmanuel Macron.

In a January post pinned to the top of the jet-tracking account’s feed before it was suspended, Sweeney wrote that it “has every right to post jet whereabouts” because the data is public and “every aircraft in the world is required to have a transponder,” including Air Force One that transports the U.S. president.

RELATED TOPICS:

DON'T MISS

Armenian President Tours Fresno, Visits William Saroyan Gravesite and Museum

DON'T MISS

Fresno City College Names Dean Medallion Winners and Commencement Speaker

DON'T MISS

Predicting What Dyer Will Say During His State of the City Address

DON'T MISS

Teoscar Hernández’s 3 RBIs Propel Dodgers to 7th Straight Win

DON'T MISS

Shohei Ohtani’s Former Interpreter Pleads Guilty in Sports Betting Case

DON'T MISS

Benson Honored Again as Bulldogs Head to NCAA Women’s Water Polo Championships

DON'T MISS

Merced County Leaders Vote to Close Two Fire Stations: ‘We’re Moving into Hard Times’

DON'T MISS

PUC’s Vote on Fixed Charge for Your Electric Bill Is Thursday. Will The Charge Keep Going Up?

DON'T MISS

Chris Tomlin, Boots in the Park, and Sandra Bernhard Headline Mother’s Day Weekend Options

DON'T MISS

RFK Jr. Says a Worm Ate Part of His Brain, but He’s Better Now

UP NEXT

Taylor Swift Drops 15 New Songs on Double Album, ‘The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology’

UP NEXT

Instagram Blurs Nude Messages to Protect Teens, Fight Sexual Extortion

UP NEXT

College Students Are Flocking to the Marriage Pact, Mostly for Fun, but Some Find Lasting Love

UP NEXT

Tesla Settles Lawsuit Over Man’s Death in a Crash Involving Its Semi-Autonomous Driving Software

UP NEXT

Free Blue Checks Return on Elon Musk’s X

UP NEXT

Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook Go Offline in Brief Outage

UP NEXT

Trump Media Stock Plummets Following Huge Loss Disclosure

UP NEXT

Facebook News Tab Will Soon Be Unavailable as Meta Scales Back News and Political Content

UP NEXT

Trump’s Social Media Company Approved to Go Public, Potentially Netting Former President Billions

UP NEXT

Apple Has Kept an Illegal Monopoly Over Smartphones in US, Justice Department Says in Antitrust Suit

Teoscar Hernández’s 3 RBIs Propel Dodgers to 7th Straight Win

2 hours ago

Shohei Ohtani’s Former Interpreter Pleads Guilty in Sports Betting Case

2 hours ago

Benson Honored Again as Bulldogs Head to NCAA Women’s Water Polo Championships

2 hours ago

Merced County Leaders Vote to Close Two Fire Stations: ‘We’re Moving into Hard Times’

2 hours ago

PUC’s Vote on Fixed Charge for Your Electric Bill Is Thursday. Will The Charge Keep Going Up?

Business /

3 hours ago

Chris Tomlin, Boots in the Park, and Sandra Bernhard Headline Mother’s Day Weekend Options

3 hours ago

RFK Jr. Says a Worm Ate Part of His Brain, but He’s Better Now

4 hours ago

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Challenges Donald Trump to Debate at Libertarian Convention

5 hours ago

Do You Love the Holiday Classic ‘Home Alone’? This Is Fresno’s Chance to Remake It.

5 hours ago

Sparks Move Home Game Against Caitlin Clark From Long Beach to Downtown LA

5 hours ago

Armenian President Tours Fresno, Visits William Saroyan Gravesite and Museum

Armenian President Vahagn Khachaturyan visited Fresno on Wednesday, part of a six-day tour in California. Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer escorted K...

42 mins ago

42 mins ago

Armenian President Tours Fresno, Visits William Saroyan Gravesite and Museum

Local Education /
59 mins ago

Fresno City College Names Dean Medallion Winners and Commencement Speaker

1 hour ago

Predicting What Dyer Will Say During His State of the City Address

2 hours ago

Teoscar Hernández’s 3 RBIs Propel Dodgers to 7th Straight Win

2 hours ago

Shohei Ohtani’s Former Interpreter Pleads Guilty in Sports Betting Case

2 hours ago

Benson Honored Again as Bulldogs Head to NCAA Women’s Water Polo Championships

2 hours ago

Merced County Leaders Vote to Close Two Fire Stations: ‘We’re Moving into Hard Times’

Business /
3 hours ago

PUC’s Vote on Fixed Charge for Your Electric Bill Is Thursday. Will The Charge Keep Going Up?

MENU

CONNECT WITH US

Search

Send this to a friend