Elon Musk offers students $5,000 to delete Twitter account

Created: 2022-01-31Updated: 2022-01-31, 4:15 p.m

By: Max Schaefer

Elon Musk is enthusiastic about space travel, but he does not want to see information about the flights of his private jet in public.

(Archive photo) © Britta Pedersen/dpa

A Twitter account provides information about the flights of Elon Musk's private jet.

The billionaire wants to have the account deleted and offers money.

However, the operator has other things in mind.

Florida – Elon Musk* is regularly active on Twitter to promote his own projects, vote on selling stocks to fight world hunger, or insult senators over their calls for a wealth tax*.

The billionaire hardly cares about the effect of his statements.

However, Musk dislikes the attention of a particular Twitter account.

The Tesla founder is even said to be willing to pay $5,000 to have the account deleted, reports CNN.

The Twitter account in question is owned by 19-year-old Jack Sweeney from Florida.

Sweeney documents the flights of Musk's private jet on the account called "ElonJet".

A bot reads freely accessible data from an online service for tracking aircraft in real time and provides information about take-offs, landings and travel times of the aircraft.

More than 215,000 people follow the account.

However, Elon Musk isn't the only celebrity entrepreneur whose private jets are being tracked in this way.

Sweeney has about a dozen similar accounts, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos* and Bill Gates*, according to CNN.

Elon Musk sees Twitter account as a security risk and wants to have it deleted

Elon Musk is not impressed with the publication of his flight data.

"Can you turn that off?" the billionaire wrote in a private message to Sweeney, according to CNN.

It's a security risk.

Musk is willing to pay $5,000 to stop "crazy people" from tracking his flights.

"I don't like the idea of ​​being shot by a madman," CNN quoted a news item as saying.

Jack Sweeney is offered $ 5000, which Elon Musk could easily pay given his steadily growing fortune *, but not enough.

The student from the USA * demanded $ 50,000 in a message.

Sweeney said he could use the money for college and a Tesla Model 3.

Elon Musk wants to keep his private jet flights secret

It doesn't feel right to pay for the Twitter account to be deleted, Elon Musk reportedly said in a recent exchange of messages with Sweeney.

The student eventually made a counteroffer: Sweeney wished he could do an internship at Musk's company.

He has been a fan of Musk's space company SpaceX since the Falcon Heavy rocket was first launched in 2018, Sweeney told CNN.

However, Elon Musk ignored the offer.

Jack Sweeney also offered technical advice to Elon Musk, telling the entrepreneur about a program he could use to block tracking of his flights.

Musk uses the program, Sweeney told CNN.

However, he is still able to track Musk's private jet.

The Sweeney Twitter account reported on Monday (01/31/2022) that Elon Musk's private jet was a little over two hours from Hawthorne in California to Brownsville in Texas.

(ms)