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| Twitter permanently shuts down an account that Musk vowed not to block |
Twitter on Wednesday suspended an automated account tracking billionaire Elon Musk's private jet, despite the latter previously promising not to suspend the account.
The @ElonJet account is run by Florida State University student Jack Sweeney and has more than 500,000 followers. The account tracked the location of Musk's plane using publicly available flight data.
On Wednesday, Sweeney posted a tweet that read, "Looks like ElonJet has been suspended," and encouraged users to follow him on other platforms.
The 20-year-old told CNBC he opened the account in June 2020 because he admires Musk's work at electric carmaker Tesla and rocket maker SpaceX, of which Musk is CEO.
Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion on Oct. 28 and has worked to protect freedom of expression on the site. In early November, Musk claimed he was a staunch advocate of free speech and would not suspend his private jet-tracking account, despite describing it as an "imminent threat to personal safety."
However, Twitter officials appear to have received different instructions from Musk. Sweeney shared a series of tweets on December 10 claiming that his account had been secretly suspended, implying that Twitter had intentionally restricted access to the account.
Sweeney said an employee sent him a screenshot of the vice chair of Twitter's trust and safety committee and requested that ElonJet's account be hidden from Twitter. As a result, the Trust and Safety Committee was dissolved last Monday.
But on December 12, Sweeney said in a tweet that the ElonJet account was no longer hidden or closed "in any way."
As a result, Sweeney said he was surprised his account was suspended Wednesday, especially since Musk promised not to. He revealed to CNBC that Musk once offered him $5,000 to cancel the account; It was a threat to his safety.
Sweeney also maintains accounts dedicated to tracking the private flights of other public figures such as Bill Gates, former US President Donald Trump and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
That, and Musk's aircraft-tracking accounts remain active on Instagram and news service Telegram.