Teenager Wants $50,000 From Elon Musk To Stop Tracking His Jet On Twitter
By Bill Galluccio
January 31, 2022
Elon Musk wants a 19-year-old from Florida to stop tracking his private jet flights and posting the information on Twitter. Musk reached out to Jack Sweeney and offered him $5,000 to delete the @ElonJet Twitter account.
Sweeney started the account in June 2020. He uses bots to scrape publicly available air-traffic data and then posts the information about where Musk's private jet is going. He has also created other accounts that track the private jets of Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.
Musk told Sweeney that the Twitter account is a security risk.
"Can you take this down? It is a security risk," Musk wrote in a direct message to the teenager. "I don't love the idea of being shot by a nutcase."
"How about $5k for this account and generally helping make it harder for crazy people to track me," Musk said.
Sweeney wasn't happy with the offer and countered that he would pull the account if Musk, who is one of the richest men in the world, paid him $50,000.
"Any chance to up that to $50K? It would be great support in college and would possibly allow me to get a car, maybe even a [Tesla] Model 3," Sweeney replied.
Musk declined, telling Sweeney that it "doesn't feel right to pay to shut this down."
Sweeney wasn't thrilled that Musk declined his offer, and made the messages public, hoping to bring Musk back to the bargaining table.
"He went the opposite way of me, so why wouldn't I go the opposite way of him?" the 19-year-old told Insider.
Musk has not said if he is willing to pay Sweeney to take down the account and stop tracking his flights.