Elon Musk doesn't seem to think twice when it comes to interacting with followers on social networks and, above all, when it comes to safeguarding his safety. The South African tycoon contacted the Twitter account called ElonJet, which tracks and shares the departures and landings of the Tesla and SpaceX CEO's private jet, and even offered him up to $5,000 if he deactivated the profile.
Behind that account is 19-year-old Jack Sweeney, who tells Protocol that he received a direct message from Elon Musk asking if he could “deactivate that”, given that he was gaining a lot of popularity and posed “a security risk”. Sweeney replied to the message seven hours later: “Yes I can, but it's going to cost you a Model 3. Just kidding, unless…” “I don't like the idea of being shot by a wacko,” Musk replied again.
Elon Musk continued to talk with Sweeney to try to reach an agreement and asked him how much money he got for managing those accounts. The young man replied that no more than 20 dollars, so Musk offered him 5,000. “Any chance of bumping that up to $50K? It would be a great support in college and possibly get me a car, maybe even a Model 3,” Sweeney replied. Musk told him he would think about it, but has yet to get a definitive answer.
The last time Sweeney contacted Elon Musk was a couple of days ago, asking himif instead of the $50,000 he could get an internship—probably at Tesla—in exchange for deactivating the bill. Musk has not responded.
“We track the plane, not who may or may not be on board”
To this day, the account continues to work and shows all the movements of the Gulfstream G650, the private jet of the head of Tesla and SpaceX. ElonJet, like other similar Sweeney profiles that track the jet flights of top executives, is powered by bots. These are in charge of detecting both takeoffs and landings of the jet with the help of scarce data —given that much of the flight information is private— provided by the Federal Aviation Administration ( FAA). Later, they share a tweet with an image of the flight information, as well as a text with the origin or destination.
When Elon Musk contacted Jack Sweeney in the fall of 2021, the account had 80,000 followers. Currently, has more than 120,000 followers. At the moment, there have been no reported incidents of people attacking Musk thanks to information from ElonJet, but the South African's concern is understandable considering that the data is shared in real time. The account, in fact, punctually publishes tweets emphasizing that the monitoring is of the plane, and not of the people on board.
Meanwhile, thanks to these profiles, Jack Sweeney has learned to code and has a part-time job as a developer at UberJets. He also highlights that the accounts have allowed him to obtain many followers on social networks and, above all, to talk with Elon Musk, whom he admires.
