Twitter bans Musk’s private flight profile – leave other flight bots alone

That’s it with @ElonJet. The well-known Twitter profile, which reported in near real-time about the flights of Elon Musk’s private jet, was blocked on Wednesday, according to the bot developer, American student Jack Sweeney.

Who the account on Twitter will only see the message «Account locked». And: “Twitter blocks accounts that violate Twitter rules”.

No more free speech

In recent months, there has been repeated (media) commotion about @elonjet because Musk had initially offered the 19-year-old $ 5,000 and later a free Tesla for closing the Twitter profile.

In early November, the tech billionaire, who took over Twitter in the same month, announced that he was so committed to free speech that he would not let @Elonjet get blocked. This is despite the account being said to be an “immediate personal security risk” as Musk claimed.

Bill Gates and Zuckerberg flight bots are still active

Sweeney has also created plenty of other flight tracking bots, including one that tracks the private jets of Russian oligarchs. This Twitter account is still visible, although it performs the same function as the ElonJet profile.

More Sweeney bumps that Track NASA aircraftjust like the Jets by Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and the Air Force One (of the US president) are all still active as well.

Publicly available flight data used

It is not yet known which Twitter terms of use are being violated by @elonjet. Musk has not yet publicly commented on the matter. Sweeney now operates his channel on the Twitter alternative Mastodon. The Musk tracker is also available on Facebook, Instagram, Telegram and Donald Trump’s social app Truth Social.

It was announced a few days ago that @elonjet was subject to a restriction of its visibility and reach by the Twitter leadership – this controversial procedure is referred to as ban shade assigned.

Sweeney said over the weekend that he had received internal messages from an anonymous Twitter employee that revealed that Twitter was limiting @ElonJet’s visibility on Dec. 2.

Before the ban, a pinned tweet said the @Elonjet profile had every right to publish the whereabouts of jets, ADS-B data was public, every plane in the world must have a transponder.

Sources

(dsc)