Elon Musk has offered 19-year-old American student Jack Sweeney $5,000 to shut down the Twitter account on which he tracks the location of his private jet. Sweeney thought the offer was too low. Musk, in turn, did not respond to Sweeney’s counter-proposal of 50,000 dollars (more than 44,000 euros).
Tesla CEO Elon Musk began to be disturbed in the fall by a Twitter account that followed the flights of his private jet. He hoped to quickly put an end to it by waving some dollars, but Jack Sweeney, 19-year-old owner of the account, was not sensitive to that.
In a personal message on Twitter, Musk asked Sweeney: ‘Can you stop that? This jeopardizes my safety.’ Seven hours later, Sweeney replied, “Yes, I can, but it will cost you a Tesla Model 3. Just kidding. Or not?’ Musk said in the conversation that he “don’t like the thought that some crazy person could take him down.”
$50,000
He asked Sweeney how much he earned from his tracking accounts, which the teen said was no more than $20 a month. Musk then offered $5,000 to delete the account and help prevent “crazy people” from following him around the world. “Is there a chance to increase this to $50,000?” Sweeney asked. Musk replied, “It doesn’t feel right to pay to close this account.”
Sweeney told the American news website Insider that he has put a lot of time into the account and that $5,000 is therefore not enough. According to him, the amount cannot replace the pleasure he has working on it. Sweeney has 15 accounts on Twitter, mainly following tech celebrities. Every time one of the planes it follows takes off or lands, it is automatically tweeted. Sweeney similarly traces Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.
265,000 followers
But Elon Musk’s account is by far the most popular. Even before the fuss with Sweeney hit the press, 83,000 Twitter users were already following Musk’s doings on the air, and that number has now grown to almost 265,000, a triple.
The university student, who claims to have inherited his fascination with airplanes from his father who works in the aviation sector, started following Musk’s flights in June 2020, as a fan of the billionaire. It was his lockdown project.
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