ElonJet, the banned Twitter bot that tracked Elon Musk's jet, is now on Threads
ElonJet is now on Threads, so you can once again track Twitter CEO Elon Musk's private jet in real time.
As spotted by Reuters, ElonJet creator Jack Sweeney launched new Threads account Elon Musk's Jet on July 7, replicating the banned Twitter account that automatically posted the location of Elon Musk's private plane. The automated bot has already tracked its first flight on Threads — a trip from Austin to Brownsville in Texas.
The location of Musk's jet is publicly available information, and supplied by the Federal Aviation Administration itself.
Even so, self-proclaimed free speech advocate Musk has previously made clear he does not appreciate Sweeney making this information so easily accessible by the public. The original ElonJet account was suspended from Twitter in Dec. 2022, two months after Musk acquired the social media platform.
A student at the University of Central Florida, Sweeney initially launched ElonJet in June 2020 alongside 15 other Twitter accounts keeping tabs on celebrities' planes. It ran without issues for over a year before Musk contacted him in Dec. 2021 and offered him $5,000 if he would shut down the account.
Sweeney counter-offered with a request for $50,000, a Tesla Model 3, or an internship at one of Musk's companies. Musk responded by blocking the college student on Twitter.
The billionaire would go on to acquire Twitter several months later, subsequently banning ElonJet despite his initial claim that his "commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane."
After ElonJet was banned Sweeney launched ElonJetNextDay, an automated Twitter account that posts the location of Musk's jet on a 24-hour delay. Musk's ban also drew enough attention that it resulted in the creation of r/ElonJetTracker, the subreddit quickly gaining over double the number of followers ElonJet had before it was suspended.
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The launch of the new Elon Musk's Jet Threads account wasn't entirely smooth. A screenshot posted to Sweeney's account shows that Instagram reinstated Elon Musk's Jet after it was initially wrongfully suspended. Fortunately, the account's ban and swift return offers some reassurance that Elon Musk's Jet will continue to run without direct interference from its platform, leaving Threads users to wildly speculate on what Musk might be up to at SpaceX's Starbase near Brownsville.