Twitter, now owned by Elon Musk, has suspended ElonJet, a Twitter account that tracked the movements of Elon Musk’s private jet. The account following those of Jeff Bezos’ plane has not been suspended.
A disturbing coincidence? After two and a half years of existence, the Twitter account entitled ElonJet has just been suspended on December 14, 2022, because it ” respect[rait] not twitter rules “. It was its owner, student and developer Jack Sweeney, who published the screenshot of the notification from Twitter on his personal account.
“ After a thorough investigation, we have decided that your account violates the rules of Twitter. Your account is now ‘read-only’, which means you cannot tweet, retweet or like content. You also won’t be able to create new accounts. “, can we read. When we click on the link to ElonJet on Twitterwe come across a suspended account.
The ElonJet account was followed by more than 520,000 Internet users, and had published 1,500 tweets detailing the movements of the billionaire’s private plane. The main objective, shared by several accounts that track the jet trips of the world’s richest people, is to show Musk’s potentially abusive use of an extremely polluting means of transport, in contradiction with his grand ecological speeches. aiming to promote the merits of its Tesla electric cars to save the planet.
Thanks to public data, Jack Sweeney broadcasts a summary table as well as a flight map each time private jet number N628TS (Musk’s) takes off into the air. This project now appears to be breaking Twitter’s rules — which paradoxically did not seem to be the case for the past two years, before Musk’s takeover of Twitter. Another coincidence, surely: the BezosJet Twitter account, also fed by Jack Sweeney, who follows the movements of billionaire Jeff Bezos’ plane, did not jump.
Since December 11, Jack Sweeney assured that Twitter was deliberately minimizing the visibility of the ElonJet account on the platform. In support, he published a screenshot of a message allegedly sent by Ella Irwin, Twitter’s new “product and trust manager”, asking her teams on Slack to apply a ” heavy visibility filter ” of the account. This screenshot could not be verified.
Did absolute freedom of expression stop at the door of Elon Musk’s vexation?
Elon Musk finalized the acquisition of Twitter at the end of October 2022, and has multiplied the big announcements since. Although he assures that the platform will be better thanks to his changes, the billionaire seems more and more entangled in a hell of a 44 billion dollar nightmare.
Many Internet users have raised the palpable inconsistency between the official discourse of Elon Musk, who says he is in favor of “absolute freedom of expression” and wants to bring back almost all the accounts banned on the platform… but who does not would not, it seems, apply this same flexibility with regard to accounts that mess with it. This is also not the only example: the new head of Twitter had quickly noticed that the parody accounts that abounded were only funny when they did not usurp… his own identity.
Fortunately, there are other platforms where Jack Sweeney still disseminates information about Elon Musk’s jet. So you can follow: