Twitter suspends tracking of Musk's private jet robot account

CTOnews.com, Dec. 15 (Reuters)-Twitter, a social media company, has suspended a robot account that tracks the private jet of CEO Elon Musk. Jack Sweeney, the account operator, confirmed the news in a tweet on Wednesday.

The Twitter account uses data available in the public domain to track Musk's private jet. Sweeney's Twitter account was also suspended late Wednesday.

In November, Musk said in a tweet that his commitment to freedom of speech "even extends to not forbidding attention to my plane's account, even if it is a direct personal security risk."

CTOnews.com learned that Musk said in response to the tweet on Wednesday: "posting other people's locations in real time is a violation of cyber manhunt policy, but it is OK to delay posting locations."

Sweeney is a 20-year-old student at the University of Central Florida. He also runs similar robot accounts on Facebook, Instagram and Telegram to track Musk's private jet. Sweeney tweeted on Saturday that Ella Irwin, Twitter's vice president of trust and security, asked for the account to be filtered to reduce user visibility.

In a previous media interview, Sweeney said he had rejected Musk's offer of $5000 to close the robot account in 2021. In addition, Twitter accounts tracking billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates planes have also been suspended.