Spare the Rod …
Jack Sweeney, the college student banned from Twitter for doxing the real-time locations of aircraft belonging to public figures—including Twitter boss Elon Musk—has returned to the platform under a new username.
Sweeney, 20, claims his admiration of Musk compelled him to begin tracking the billionaire entrepreneur’s private jet in 2020. In point of fact, Sweeney maintained over thirty Twitter accounts by which he tracked celebrities, politicians, and iconic figures the likes of Donald Trump, Mark Zuckerberg, Kim Kardashian, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Following the suspension of his @ElonJet account, Sweeney defiantly asserted: "I really didn't think he'd suspend my personal account. I didn't think he'd do anything because of all the media attention he'd get."
Indifferent to the dangers faced by public figures in a highly-polarized world, Sweeney subsequently declared the suspension of his Twitter accounts had steeled his resolve to go on sharing the whereabouts of Musk's and others’ jets on competing social media platforms such as Instagram, Discord, and Mastodon.
"I mean, f*ck this guy," Sweeney said of Musk. "This is ridiculous. My personal account doesn't even track the planes. I'm going full-blast."
Previously, Sweeney refused a $5,000 offer from Musk to voluntarily take down the @ElonJet account, which the Tesla and SpaceX founder called a "security risk" before circumspectly stating he didn’t wish to be "shot by a nutcase."
Notwithstanding his steadfast commitment to free speech, Musk has promised legal action against Sweeney, insinuating a serious allegation in a tweet reading: “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.”
The threat Musk described was to his child, who goes by the unusual moniker X Æ A-Xii, but to whom Musk refers as lil X.
“Legal action is being taken against Sweeney & organizations who supported harm to my family,” Musk concluded.
Sweeney denied the incident had anything to do with his account, and has since resumed his aircraft tracking activities by dint of a new @ElonJetNextDay Twitter account which functions similarly to his banned account—excepting a 24-hour delay.
Following the @ElonJet donnybrook, Twitter implemented a new policy banning—in most cases—the posting of individuals’ real-time locations. The social-media platform set forth that it would, thenceforth, remove tweets that disclosed people’s locations and itineraries and suspend the accounts by which such tweets were posted. The policy specified, however, that "sharing publicly available location information after a reasonable time has elapsed, so that the individual is no longer at risk for physical harm" is not a violation.
On 15 December 2022, Elon Musk tweeted: "Any account doxing 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." Invoking laudable temperance, the tech-titan added: "Posting locations someone traveled to on a slightly delayed basis isn't a safety problem, so is ok."
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