Jack Sweeney, the individual behind a real-time tracking account for Elon Musk’s private jet, has switched to Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter alternative, Threads, after facing suspension from Twitter last year.
Sweeney’s inaugural post on Thursday from the account @elonmusksjet on Threads stated, “ElonJet has arrived to Threads!” The account currently boasts over 21,000 followers as of Saturday morning.
Under the handle @elonmusksjet, the account named ElonJet has monitored and documented the movements of Musk’s private jet, utilizing publicly available data.
In December 2022, Musk-owned Twitter Inc suspended the ElonJet account, with the billionaire threatening legal action against the account’s operator after stating that a “crazy stalker” had mistakenly followed his son.
Many of those accounts – including one tracking aircraft associated with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and another monitoring celebrity jets was suspended on Twitter . Musk had long taken issue with the @ElonJet account, and once reportedly offered Jack Sweeney $5,000 to delete it.
Jack Sweeney told US media outlets that Musk ultimately told him it did not feel right to pay to have the account shut down. Musk pledged to keep it running even though it was a “direct personal safety risk”.
Meta-owned Threads, posing a direct challenge to Twitter, garnered millions of users in hours, including prominent figures such as Kim Kardashian, Jennifer Lopez and Democratic U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as it seeks to take advantage of its rival’s weakened state after a series of chaotic decisions from Musk.
