Teen who tracks Elon Musk's jet movements wants a Tesla to stop following him
PremiumMr. Sweeney’s Twitter account, @ElonJet, has amassed nearly 350,000 followers.
Jack Sweeney, 19, a freshman at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, has made a hobby out of following the private jets belonging to billionaire entrepreneurs and even some celebrities.
Using public data from plane transponders that log longitude, latitude and altitude, Mr. Sweeney, in 2020, created an algorithm that calculates the whereabouts of a Gulfstream G650ER he says belongs to Mr. Musk, the chief executive of Tesla Inc.
He shares flight movements for planes owned by Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos and Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates, among others.
Mr. Sweeney’s Twitter account, @ElonJet, has amassed nearly 350,000 followers.
Sweeney said Musk asked him to shut down the Twitter account and also offered him $5,000 to close the account, but he refused to accept the offer, according to media reports.
Sweeney made a counteroffer to Elon Musk, saying that he would abandon the account if Musk upped the ante to $50,000. He said that he would also accept a Tesla Model 3, an electric car that costs more than $38,000, adding that he was joking.
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“I always thought people who like Tesla or the whole Elon community on Twitter would be interested," Sweeney told CNBC. “But now, it’s really gone everywhere."
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