Elon Musk claims he is suing the owner of a Twitter account that tracks his private jet because he believes it put his son in danger.
On Wednesday, the @ElonJet account, which has more than 500,000 followers, was suspended.
Its 20-year-old owner Jack Sweeney tweeted each time Elon Musk’s aircraft took off and touched down using publicly accessible flight tracking data.
Mr. Musk claims that Mr. Sweeney and others are currently the targets of legal action.
He continued, “As it is a physical safety violation, any account that discloses people’s real-time locations would be suspended.”
A screenshot of a message from Twitter stating that it had performed a “careful assessment” and chosen to permanently ban the account for breaking its rules was shared by Mr. Sweeney, a college student in the state of Florida, with CNN.
The student is in control of other additional accounts that monitor the private flights of affluent Americans, including Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta.
On Wednesday afternoon, many of those accounts—including one tracking planes connected to Russian President Vladimir Putin and another keeping an eye on celebrity jets—appeared to have been suspended from Twitter as well.
The @ElonJet account had long been an irritant for Mr. Musk, who allegedly once paid Mr. Sweeney $5,000 to have it deleted.
Mr. Musk ultimately told Mr. Sweeney that paying to have the account closed did not feel right, according to Mr. Sweeney’s statements to US media outlets.
And a month ago, Mr. Musk promised to continue operating it even though it posed a “direct personal safety risk.”
But Mr. Musk tweeted on Wednesday evening: “Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation. This includes posting links to sites with real-time location info.”
You may not publish or upload other people’s private information without their express knowledge and approval, according to a revised media policy posted on Twitter by the Help Center.
Mr. Musk has changed Twitter’s moderation procedures in several ways since becoming the reins of the company.
A few previously prohibited accounts have been reinstated by him, including the profile of former US President Donald Trump, which was prohibited following the uprising at the US Capitol on January 6.
According to the New York Times, the Tesla CEO has reduced Twitter’s workforce and ceased paying rent for parts of the company’s offices, including its San Francisco headquarters.
