Twitter suspends account that tracked private jet owned by Elon Musk

Twitter suspended an account that tracked the movements of new CEO Elon Musk’s private jet, weeks after Musk vowed not to ban the account.

The @elonjet account, run by Jack Sweeney, used publicly available flight data to automate tweets about the jet’s movements, but the account page shows it was suspended for violating the company’s rules.

Musk, who has pledged to return “free speech” to Twitter, said days after closing his takeover deal in October that he would not ban the account.

“My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk,” Musk wrote on Nov. 6.

Following the suspension, Musk’s tweet now appears alongside a Community Note, a relatively new feature that allows users to offer context about tweets. If participants who sometimes disagreed in the past agree on a note for a particular tweet, it appears for other users.

“The implied account in this tweet is elonjet, which is currently banned,” the note reads.

Musk on Wednesday wrote, “Real-time posting of someone else’s location violates doxxing policy, but delayed posting of locations are ok.”

Twitter also suspended Sweeney’s personal account, and multiple users reported the platform is blocking tweets containing links to Sweeney’s equivalent tracker on Instagram. His trackers on Facebook and Instagram remain live.

The Hill has reached out to Twitter for comment.

Since taking over Twitter, Musk has railed against the platform’s past content moderation policies and argued they stifled conservative speech.

The company has stopped enforcing its COVID-19 misinformation policy, and Musk has also restored the account of former President Trump, who was barred from the platform following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, among other accounts that were previously banned. Trump has not yet tweeted since the reversal.

Musk’s actions have drawn the ire of Democrats and multiple civil rights groups, who warn of an increase in hate speech on Twitter, but he he has been hailed by conservatives who heavily criticized the company previously.

Updated: 6:02 p.m.