Elon Musk brings controversy wherever he goes. Since this spring, when the magnate announced the purchase of his trusted social network, Twitter, scandal has been his constant companion. In the first months after the announcement of the Twitter purchase, the South African businessman announced his intention to back out of the deal; currently, he is closing user accounts. Whose accounts? Below, we give you all the details.
If any of you already read the post we published last April on our blog, you might recognize the name Jack Sweeney. This 19-year-old operates on Twitter under the account @ElonJet and is dedicated to posting the itineraries of Musk’s private jet, tracking landings and takeoffs. Young Jack had already received a lucrative offer of $5,000 to shut down that account, but he did not accept.
Time passed until last month, November, when the entrepreneur and CEO of the electric car company Tesla openly declared his commitment to freedom of expression, a commitment that required him to respect even the ElonJet account that followed his private plane.
Well, just one month after this plea in favor of the right to freedom of expression, Musk shuts down this account and others that follow private jets of millionaires. Specifically, 25 profiles have been suspended from Twitter for following private jets of millionaires and public organizations in real time. Now, Elon Musk cites a security issue as justification for having acted this way.
Under this premise, the social network has also suspended other similar profiles that followed other major business figures such as Mark Zuckerberg (CEO of Meta); Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon), Warren Buffett, or former U.S. President Donald Trump. The same fate befell another account managed by Sweeney that followed several Russian oligarchs.
Apparently, the key is not so much in following the routes of these planes, but in sharing the location in real time. It would not be the same if these accounts shared past locations. In fact, the terms and conditions that Twitter cites to close an account have recently been updated to include this case, that of sharing location in real time.
This is not the first time Musk has done a “What I said, I take back.” At first, the new owner of the social network said he would create a council to decide which accounts could be on Twitter; then it turned out that none of what was announced happened. Something similar happened when he announced the blocking of Donald Trump’s account after the Capitol riot, although Trump was eventually reinstated by Musk.
