Teen who tracks Musk’s private jet suspects his account will be shut down

The bot created Sweeney uses publicly available ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast) Exchange and automatically sends out tweets when the billionaire tech entrepreneur’s private jet makes the move. The ADS-B exchange describes itself as the world’s largest source of unfiltered flight data.

Elon at the recent ted talk “A top priority I would have is eliminating the spam and scam bots and the armies that are on Twitter” Would he include my bot and others that are of actual use or just spambots? pic.twitter.com/74ofZBih3J
— Jack Sweeney (@JxckSweeney) April 25, 2022
On November 30, 2021, Elon Musk had direct messaged Sweeney with an offer of $5000 to take down the bot. He rejected the offer and made a counteroffer where he agreed to do the same for $50,000, which didn’t garner a response from Musk, who later just blocked the bot account.
In a Twitter thread posted on April 27, Sweeney explained how Musk’s promise to “defeat bots” on the platform could also mean that the account he created could fall under the scanner for deletion.

Sweeney further explained how Musk’s tweet about wanting his worst critics to remain on Twitter will not except @ElonJet from deletion, because as he pointed out correctly, the bot is technically not a critic.

His recent tweet seems to make it seem id stay, but if he considers @ElonJet a security risk rather than a critic then I’m probably gone. pic.twitter.com/Y06xWgdnbO
— Jack Sweeney (@JxckSweeney) April 25, 2022
In February this year, Twitter announced a new feature that will allow ‘good bots’ on the platform to be identified a robot head panel on their profile. The platform defines good bots as those that help people find useful, entertaining and relevant information automatically tweeting it.
Sweeney’s @ElonJet falls into this category and can be identified the robot head symbol and a message that says “Automated @JxckSweeney” at the top of the profile, right under its handle.
In case the teenage coder’s hypothesis is true, and the bot he created gets booted off the platform once Musk’s acquisition is complete, that won’t stop him. Sweeney promises to continue publishing data about Musk’s jet through Discord and Telegram.

In case I’m off of Twitter for whatever reason all my tracking is also in my Discord server, and I’ll be publishing a Telegram channel for @ElonJet soon!
— Jack Sweeney (@JxckSweeney) April 25, 2022