Earlier this week, 19-year-old Jack Sweeney won a bit of internet fame when published a story about one of his Twitter bots. The college student maintains ElonJet, a tracker that tweets out when Elon Musk’s private jet takes off and lands. Sweeney has several other such bots that use publicly available air traffic data to follow the private planes of celebrities like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. However, with 180,000 followers and counting, the ElonJet account is by far Sweeney’s most famous creation. And it’s that popularity that attracted none other than Elon Musk to the bot.
Last fall, the entrepreneur contacted Sweeney about ElonJet. “Can you take this down? It is a security risk,” he said, according to Protocol. Musk told Sweeney he would give him $5,000 to delete the account and keep “crazy people” from finding out his whereabouts. Sweeney made a counteroffer….
