A Florida college student is refusing to disable a social media account that shares the location of Elon Musk's private jet, despite a $5,000 offer from the Tesla CEO.
Through the Twitter account Elon Jet, IT major Jack Sweeney posts regular updates of the plane's whereabouts. The account has amassed an impressive 300,000 followers, even catching the eye of Musk himself.
Using public flight data, Sweeney tracks the jet with a bot.
"The bot takes action on landing and take off and states the location, state, country, and city," he explained on his website. "Also creates an image of a map of that location and attaches to the tweet. Also calculates and estimated flight time from takeoff to landing and puts the flight time in the landing tweet."
After months of tracking, Musk reached out to Sweeney in November.
"One night when I'm about to go to bed he just (direct messages) me, 'hey could you take this down, it's a security risk.' he was asking me how it works and everything," Sweeney said in a statement to KNTV.
Musk offered the UCF student $5,000 to take the account down, but Sweeney refused, asking for $50,000 instead. "(Musk) said 'it doesn't feel right to pay to take this down,'" Sweeney told the station.
Sweeney later wrote he'd take ElonJet down for an internship, but Musk then blocked him.
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