The person who ran automated Twitter accounts that tracked Elon Musk’s and SpaceX’s jets had his personal account suspended Wednesday afternoon.
Earlier Wednesday, the two jet-tracking accounts owned by Jack Sweeney were suspended and about a half-hour after Mr. Sweeney used his personal account to point this out in protest, that too was gone.
Mr. Sweeney had tweeted out “Well it appears @ElonJet is suspended” around mid-morning, just days after he said that an anonymous employee told him his posts were being covertly suppressed — or “shadow-banned” — by the company.
He said later that afternoon that his account used to track the SpaceX employee jet had also been suspended.
“This is coordinated and Elon is well aware I’m sure,” Mr. Sweeney wrote Wednesday afternoon on his personal account before it was suspended at about 2:40 p.m.
Other accounts Mr. Sweeney used to track private jets, such as those of Mark Zuckerberg, Vladimir Putin and various celebrities, have also been suspended.
Mr. Sweeney, who is a student at the University of Central Florida, began tracking the private jets of many famous figures with automated Twitter accounts in 2020.
Each of them tweets publicly available information from sites such as ADS-B Exchange, which provides the location, altitude and speed data logged by federally regulated aircraft.
The account for Mr. Musk’s jet had close to 530,000 followers before being shut off.
Over the weekend, Mr. Sweeney shared that an unnamed Twitter employee told him his account was severely “visibility limited/restricted” beginning Dec. 2.
The anonymous employee also sent Mr. Sweeney a screenshot of a message from Ella Irwin, Twitter’s vice president of Trust and Safety, where she said, “Team please apply heavy VF to @elonjet immediately.”
“VF” is shorthand for “visibility filtering,” the in-house jargon used by Twitter’s staff that involves making it harder to search for certain accounts, preventing those accounts from showing up on people’s timelines and being unable to tag the accounts through suggested usernames.
It’s equivalent to what people commonly call “shadow-banning.”
The practice became a topic of controversy after it was revealed previous Twitter employees used VF to suppress traffic to conservative accounts.
That revelation came about during the “Twitter Files,” the journalistic mini-series Mr. Musk launched to cover scandals under the social-media giant’s previous ownership.
The college student said Monday he was no longer being shadow-banned after using a website to scan for unusual activity.
Mr. Sweeney has been open to shutting down those who don’t want to be tracked — for the right price.
He cut a deal with Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, in the spring to shut down his @MCubansJet account in exchange for friendship and business advice.
Mr. Musk has long argued that the account creates a safety concern.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO offered Mr. Sweeney $5,000 to shut down the account in January, but the college student wanted $50,000 instead.
- This story is based in part on wire service reports.
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.
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