Twitter bans account tracking Elon Musk – despite promise to keep it alive

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Twitter has suspended an account that tracked the movements of Elon Musk’s private jet – just one month after the tech billionaire promised to protect it in the name of free speech.

The @ElonJet account, run by software developer Jack Sweeney, had hundreds of thousands of followers before it was taken down on Wednesday.

“My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk,” Mr Musk tweeted on 7 November, less than two weeks after acquiring the company for $44 billion.

Mr Musk had previously tried to purchase the account for $50,000, but Mr Sweeney refused.

Earlier this week, Mr Sweeney raised suspicions that the plane-tracking account had been shadow-banned, but this was soon restored.

On Wednesday he tweeted: “Well it appears @ElonJet is suspended.”

He shared a screenshot revealing the account had been “permanently suspended” for breaking Twitter rules.

Mr Sweeney said he would launch the account on rival platform Mastodon.

The Independent has reached out to Twitter for more information regarding the suspension, though following Mr Musk’s takeover, most of the firm’s communications department was fired.