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After banning the college student who tracked Elon Musk's jet, Twitter also banned sharing links to his jet tracker accounts on other social media platforms

Kelsey Vlamis
Wed, December 14, 2022 


Elon Musk and the Gulfstream G550 jet.Sean Zanni / Contributor/Getty Images; Courtesy of Jetcraft

The college student who tracked Elon Musk's jet on Twitter had over 30 of his accounts banned on Wednesday.


Twitter also blocked anyone from sharing links to Sweeney's accounts on other platforms.


Musk said in November he would allow the account to remain due to his "commitment to free speech."

Twitter on Wednesday banned an account that previously tracked Elon Musk's private jet — but it also went a step further, banning anyone from sharing a link to similar accounts on other social media sites.

The @ElonJet Twitter account, run by college student Jack Sweeney, was suspended from the platform, despite Musk saying in November he would not ban the account due to his "commitment to free speech." Sweeney told Insider at the time he was "pleased" that Musk would allow his account to remain.

"I kind of figured that was his stance because if it wasn't people would be after him for saying one thing and then coming and banning my account," Sweeney, who called himself a fan of Musk, said in November.

But on Wednesday the account — as well as more than 30 others that Sweeney used to track the private jets of celebrities — was suspended. Shortly after, Twitter announced an update to its "Private Information policy" that would "prohibit sharing someone else's live location in most cases."

"When someone shares an individual's live location on Twitter, there is an increased risk of physical harm. Moving forward, we'll remove Tweets that share this information, and accounts dedicated to sharing someone else's live location will be suspended," the company said in a tweet.

In addition to blocking the Twitter account that tracked Musk's jet, the platform has also banned sharing links to Sweeney's @elonmusksjet Instagram account and his "Elon Musk's Jet" Facebook page. When trying to tweet a link to the Instagram account as of Wednesday evening, Twitter returned an error message with the note: "We can't complete this request because the link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful."

Twitter has blocked sharing links to Instagram and Facebook pages that track his private jet.Twitter

In the updated policy, Twitter also stated that sharing links to sites that track real-time location would also be blocked, writing that prohibited live location information included "information shared on Twitter directly or links to 3rd-party URL(s) of travel routes, actual physical location, or other identifying information that would reveal a person's location, regardless if this information is publicly available."

Sweeney told Insider's Grace Kay on Wednesday that his personal Twitter account was suspended hours after his jet tracking accounts, which compiled and published publicly available data.

"I really didn't think he'd suspend my personal account," Sweeney said. "I didn't think he'd do anything because of all the media attention he'd get."

Sweeney, who previously said his account had been "shadow-banned," also said he planned to continue tracking Musk's jet on other platforms.

"I mean, fuck this guy," he said. "This is ridiculous. My personal account doesn't even track the planes. I'm going full-blast."

Elon Musk tried to get rid of Twitter bots by blocking hundreds of thousands of accounts, but accidentally impacted many legitimate users

Pete Syme
Wed, December 14, 2022 

Musk at a 2022 Halloween party.Taylor Hill/Getty Images

Twitter blocked around 30 mobile carriers due to Elon Musk's bot fears, per Platformer.


But this meant many real users were also denied access to the app on Sunday.


Staff rushed to reverse the ban after top telecom companies passed on customer complaints.

Elon Musk accidentally blocked real Twitter users as the platform denied access to hundreds of thousands of accounts in an attempt to reduce bot numbers, Platformer reported.

Around midnight Saturday, the world's second-richest person tweeted: "The bots are in for a surprise tomorrow."

Hours later, the main telecom providers in India and Russia – plus the second-biggest in Indonesia – were all blocked from Twitter.

Roughly 30 mobile carriers, primarily in eastern Asia, were all cut off from the app as part of Musk's attempt to limit spam.

Instead of identifying individual accounts, Twitter identified mobile networks which were associated with large bots networks, Platformer reported.

It first blocked SMS messages used for two-factor authentication, before preventing access to Twitter completely.

Musk's concern about bots was a prime issue as he tried to pull out of the deal to acquire Twitter over the summer. His lawyers also argued that Twitter was hiding staff responsible for calculating how many accounts were bots.

He had claimed that 20% of users were fake or spam, but Musk's own data scientists found the number to be around 5% to 11%.

Sunday's ban only lasted for a bit more than an hour, before the telecom companies passed their customers' complaints onto the social network.

On the company's Slack, a Twitter engineer shared an email from one of the companies, Platformer reported. One employee said: "I expect more emails like this to hit our peering queue tomorrow."

Another replied: "We blocked a fair few huge carriers, so I would expect so."

The telecom companies were told the issue was due to "routing configuration changes" as Twitter staff quickly undid the block.

Musk had also demanded employees explain why a specific account had been able to impersonate him, per Platformer. The hacked account had been able to share crypto scams because it was verified.

One employee said that Twitter's content moderation tool used to identify spam "has been unstable for at least a week now."

Twitter did not immediately reply to Insider's request for comment.