A Twitter account which tracked Elon Musk's private jet has been suspended, despite Musk saying he wouldn't ban it for 'free speech' reasons

The Twitter account tracking Elon Musk's private jet was suspended from the platform on Wednesday.
Jack Sweeney, who runs ElonJet, earlier said he had been shadowbanned since Musk took over Twitter in October.
Musk had previously said he wouldn't shut the account down, even though he disliked it.

A Twitter account that tracked Elon Musk's private jet has been suspended from the platform despite Musk saying he wouldn't because of his "commitment to free speech."

The account @elonjet has been suspended today with a message on its profile saying: "Twitter suspends accounts that violate the Twitter Rules."

Jack Sweeney, owner of the jet tracking account, confirmed this on Twitter, posting a picture showing that his account had been suspended because it "broke the Twitter Rules," and is now "permanently in read-only mode."

The billionaire CEO tweeted in November that he wouldn't remove the account for "free speech" reasons saying: "My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk."

Sweeney posted a thread on Twitter on Sunday titled "My Twitter Files" saying that he learned from an anonymous Twitter employee that his account had been shadowbanned. Sweeney shared a screenshot of internal messages from Twitter's head of trust and safety Ella Irwin asking her team to apply heavy visibility filtering on the ElonJet account.

Sweeney told Insider's Beatrice Nolan that he suspected "for quite a while" that the account was "definitely search banned/ search suggestion banned."

Twitter and Sweeney did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider regarding the suspension.

Sweeney has over 30 accounts tracking politicians and billionaires including Donald Trump, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos.

Elon originally offered Sweeney $5,000 to take down the tracking account saying it's a "security risk" and he doesn't "love the idea of being shot by a nutcase."

Sweeney countered the offer by asking for $50,000 which he said would help him go to college and get a car, but Musk later said it "doesn't feel right to pay to shut this down."

"I've done a lot of work on this and 5k is not enough," Sweeney said in an interview with Insider previously. He said that $5,000 wasn't enough to replace "the fun I have in this, working on it."

Musk has claimed to be a "free speech absolutist," and recently published his Twitter Files which aims to expose free speech suppression on the platform prior to his takeover. Twitter dissolved its Trust and Safety Council, which advocated for safety on the site, on Monday.

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Contributer : Business Insider https://ift.tt/KGY2Fjz

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