College student tracking Elon Musk’s jet moves to Threads, faces another suspension

The college student who rose to notoriety for tracking Elon Musk’s jet travels on Twitter has moved his platform to Threads, Meta’s newest app.

Jack Sweeney, who had his @ElonJet account permanently suspended from Twitter in December, has been using the BlueSky app to continue tracking celebrity and Russian oligarch jets. He tweeted from his personal account on Wednesday that he had set up his tracking operation on Threads. As of Friday morning, the Threats account had been suspended on Threads and he was back to using BlueSky.

The @ElonJet account used data from the ADS-B network and FAA database to tweet flight information and route pictures to his followers. Musk was outspoken in his distrust and dislike of the account, claiming it was a safety concern, despite Sweeney offering to stagger the release of data so nothing would be shared in real-time. Sweeney was reportedly offered $5,000 to stop tracking the jet, with Musk reaching out in a private message saying he was concerned and didn’t “love the idea of being shot by a nutcase.”

While the information Sweeney used was all public and attainable, it was seen as an invasion of privacy. Musk, who bought the Twitter platform in October, shut down all of Sweeney’s jet-tracking accounts on Twitter in December. Musk had been outspoken about believing in free speech in the past but felt strongly enough that the account was a direct personal safety risk.

Sweeney had even been threatened with a lawsuit in the past over his accounts. Twitter now threatens a lawsuit with Threads, which Sweeney called an “empty threat.”

The question is whether the account does violate terms and conditions. While Sweeney is legally obtaining the information through publicly released data, some have argued it is an invasion of privacy and could pose a safety risk to travelers by outing when and where they travel in such a highly public method. Some jets are on a block list, meaning the details are not shown publicly. Sweeney used the jet’s altitude and the time the information was received to track the aircraft’s exact location.

Some aircraft owners opt to apply for a Privacy ICAO Address, which grants a temporary alternate ICAO aircraft address that is not tied to an operator in the Civil Aviation Registry. This was launched in 2020 but Sweeney developed a method to crack the system. What started as an account tracking Musk, grew into several accounts, one even tracking Russian oligarchs.

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Since the Threads app is so new, it is unknown whether the suspension will be permanent. according to Tech Times, Twitter imposed the ban due to the exposure of real-time location information. Threads policies are relatively unknown since the app launched Wednesday. At the tiMe this story is written, Sweeney’s account is still suspended on Threads and his accounts on Twitter are, and will likely remain, permanently shut down.

For now, the tracking of Musk’s jet is limited to BlueSky. Sweeney, who started tracking the jet in college as a teen, has found several ways to work around privacy settings and found data to continue sharing his content. Despite the Threads suspension, Sweeney might still find a way to let the world know exactly where Musk is flying.