Elon Musk announced Wednesday evening that he is taking legal action against the teenager who runs a Twitter account that tracks the billionaire’s jet flights. The account has since been suspended.
After implying that a jet-tracking account operated by Jack Sweeney, a University of Central Florida freshman, was to blame for a Tuesday stalking incident where somebody followed Musk’s family, the Twitter CEO made an announcement.
“Last night, car carrying lil X in LA was followed by crazy stalker (thinking it was me), who later blocked car from moving & climbed onto hood,” Musk wrote on Twitter referring to his 2-year-old son X Æ A-12. “Legal action is being taken against Sweeney & organizations who supported harm to my family.”
Musk later posted a video to social media of a man in a white Hyundai wearing a mask and hood, captioning it “Anyone recognize this person or car?” This is the alleged stalker, according to Musk.
When contacted for comment, the Los Angeles Police Department stated that they were not aware of the incident in question.
Musk abruptly ended Sweeney’s access earlier today, but briefly allowed him back on to ask questions about the rules before deactivating it again later in the day.
Musk stated that any account “doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation.”
The tech mogul’s first suspension made him a ‘full-on hypocrite,’ according to Sweeney.
The New York Times found that, in the aftermath, at least 25 Twitter accounts tracking billionaires’ private jets were suspended.
Sharing a location documentation on Twitter will only be allowed with a “slight downtime delay” because it seems safe enough. Twitter has confirmed that our location cannot be shared on the day we are traveling to it. We are of course still able to share our own location.
Last month, Elon Musk addressed George Sweeney’s popular tracking account as a ‘direct safety risk’ but pledged not to take it down because of his commitment to free speech.
Just two days before his suspension, Sweeney claimed that his account had been shadow-banned. According to Sweeney, a Twitter employee called the teenager and said that he was posting too many tweets about mental health issues. They also said his visibility on the site was being “heavily filtered.”
When Bari Weiss took issue with Twitter for allegedly only banning conservative accounts, Elon Musk said that he was working on a software update to show users if they had been shadowbanned.
