ElonJet is a service that uses social media accounts to track the real-time private airplane usage of Elon Musk. The service, created and provided by Jack Sweeney using public data, has accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, Truth Social, Mastodon, Threads, and formerly on Twitter, where the Twitter account once had about 530,000 followers, before being suspended. Several of the social media accounts use the handle @elonjet.
The Twitter account, created in June 2020, had been targeted by Musk beginning in 2021. He offered to pay Sweeney $5,000; Sweeney countered requesting $50,000 or an internship in one of Musk's companies, and offered advice on restricting flight tracking data. Musk blocked Sweeney in January 2021. In late 2022, after Musk purchased Twitter, he announced he would not ban the ElonJet account. In December, a stalker doxxed Elon's 2-year-old son while he was traveling in a car; the stalker thought Musk was in the car. After the incident, the account was restricted and then blocked along with Sweeney's personal and other flight tracking accounts, as part of the December 2022 Twitter account suspensions. Later, shortly after the incident, accounts of several journalists were reinstated.
On December 22, 2022, Sweeney started the new @ElonJetNextDay Twitter account, which continues to track the flights of Elon Musk's private jets, but publishes flight location information on a 24-hour delay in compliance with Twitter's new rules 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.
Function
The ElonJet service uses publicly available flight data as well as an automated computer program, a Twitter bot, to report Elon Musk's flights. The service utilizes ADS-B data, publicly available records, to give general details about where and when Musk's private jet was taking off and landing, though it cannot indicate who is on board or where the passengers travel before or after the flight. The Twitter account in particular became a reliable way for Musk's investors, fans, and critics to determine his whereabouts, often between the Austin area where he lives, the San Francisco Bay area where Tesla's factory is, and Southern California, where SpaceX is headquartered.
, the ElonJet service is hosted on Twitter, Facebook, Telegram, Instagram, Threads, Mastodon, and Bluesky accounts. The Mastodon account was created on December 14, 2022, a day after the original Twitter account was suspended. Sweeney has earned a few thousand dollars with the accounts, via ad revenue, allowing him to upgrade his computer. A subreddit dedicated to the service, r/ElonJetTracker, gained over 40,000 members in the two days since it was created on December 14, becoming one of the fastest-growing subreddits on the website.
History
The ElonJet Twitter account was started in June 2020 by Florida student Jack Sweeney. At the time, he was a high school senior, with his education suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. Sweeney considered himself a fan of Musk's work at SpaceX and Tesla, leading him to start the account.
Elon Musk has had issues with the account for a long time, and offered Jack Sweeney $5,000 to delete the account in 2021. Sweeney countered asking for $50,000, saying he would use the money for college and possibly to buy a Tesla Model 3. Their last exchange was in January 2022, when Musk said it wouldn't feel right to pay in order to shut the account down. Sweeney asked about the possibility of an internship at one of Musk's companies, and offered Musk advice, including about a federal privacy program to vary the ID his transponder beamed out, thus blocking flight tracking programs. Musk began using the program, though Sweeney remained able to track Musk's flights. Musk blocked Sweeney sometime after January 23.
Musk purchased Twitter in October 2022, and announced early in the next month that he would not ban the ElonJet account, as he is an advocate for free speech, despite a "direct personal safety risk". On December 10, Sweeney shared his discovery that the Twitter account had been shadow banned, where Twitter intentionally limits the account's reach within the site. Twitter's Trust and Safety Council vice president asked to place "heavy visibility filtering" on the account. The council was disbanded on December 12, and that day Sweeney reported that the account no longer seemed hidden in any way.