Twitter suspends account tracking Musk, legal action underway

15-12-2022 Thu 10:40 | Technology | IANS

Twitter has suspended the account that was tracking the movements of CEO Elon Musk's private plane, and Musk claimed that he is taking legal action against the account's owner. Jack Sweeney, a 19-year-old college student and aviation enthusiast, created the @ElonJet account, which provided regular updates on flights of Musk by using publicly available data.

Musk on Thursday said: "legal action is being taken against Sweeney and organisations who supported harm to my family," arguing it put his son at risk.

"Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation. This includes posting links to sites with real-time location info."

Even Sweeney's personal account got suspended from the micro-blogging platform along with the other tracking accounts that he created.

On November 7, Musk claimed that the account was a "personal safety risk" but he will not suspend it as a part of his "commitment to free speech."

In January, Musk had offered Sweeney $5,000 to remove the Twitter bot tracking the movements of his private plane.

Meanwhile, in February, Musk had blocked Sweeney on the micro-blogging platform. Later, Sweeney said he had created 16 automated Twitter accounts, or bots, similar to @ElonJet to follow jets owned by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates (@GatesJet), Amazon's Jeff Bezos, the billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban and the rapper Drake.

(The content of this article is sourced from a news agency and has not been edited by the ap7am team.)