Elon Musk has threatened legal action against a Twitter account that stalked his private jet after a “crazy stalker” attacked a car carrying his young son.
The 51-year-old billionaire wrote on the social media platform that he would take legal action against Jack Sweeney, a college student and programmer who opened an @elonjet flight tracking account.
“The car carrying lil X was followed by a crazy stalker in LA last night (thought it was me) who later stopped the car from moving and climbed onto the hood,” musk wrote.
“Legal action is being taken against Sweeney and the organization that supported harm to my family.”
This was posted shortly after Mr Sweeney’s @elonjet account with more than 526,000 followers was shut down suspended from twitterdespite Musk’s promise to keep it up because of his free speech principles.
New rules were also announced for all users – no more sharing of anyone’s current location.
“Any account that doxxes anyone’s real-time location will be suspended as it is a physical security violation,” Mr. Musk tweeted.
“Human flesh” refers to the disclosure of someone’s identity, address or other personal details online.
freedom of speech? Musk is ‘doing the opposite’
It was unclear what legal action Musk would take against Mr. Sweeney over the account that automatically posted public flight information.
“He’s saying it’s free speech and he’s doing the opposite,” the 20-year-old said as he described waking up to a flood of messages from people seeing @elonjet suspended.
Beginning in 2020, when Sweeney was a teenager, the account automatically posted flights on Gulfstream jets, complete with maps and estimates of jet fuel consumption and carbon emissions.
Later, his personal account was also suspended, and he left a message saying that this violated Twitter’s “anti-platform manipulation and spam” regulations.
Do tech giants really have a future?
$5,000 to close account
Last year, the University of Central Florida student said Musk sent him a private message offering to close the jet-tracking account for $5,000 (£4,036), citing security concerns.
But after buying Twitter for $44bn (£35.8bn) in late October, Musk said he would let it stay.
Mr. Sweeney also opened similar “bot” accounts to track the planes of other celebrities, such as those used by Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and various Russian oligarchs.
Hours after @elonjet account was suspended, others were alive but now blocked.
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Musk sells 22 million Tesla shares
at the same time, Musk reveals another $3.6 billion Tesla stock sale His total net worth this year was close to $40 billion on Wednesday.
He sold 22 million shares of the world’s most valuable automaker in the past three days, a U.S. securities filing showed.
The sale is the second largest stock he has cashed out since buying Twitter.
It’s unclear whether those sales were related to Twitter’s acquisition, but they irritated investors who believed he was shifting his attention to Twitter instead of Tesla, unnerving them.