An unexpected spat has erupted between a 19-year-old college student and Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, SpaceX, and one of the richest people in the world.
In 2020 Jack Sweeney, a University of Central Florida freshman, created a twitter bot that could track the flights of Elon Musk's private jet. Since then, the twitter account has garnered more than 275,000 followers on the social media site.
This twitter account has infuriated Musk who deems it to be a security threat, and in November of 2020 Musk messaged Sweeney saying:
"Can you take this down? It is a security risk."
When this demand was rejected, Musk offered to give the college student $5,000, a tiny fraction of Elon Musk's 243-billion-dollar fortune. Musk added with the offer:
"I don't love the idea of being shot by a nutcase."
It was then that Sweeney instead demanded $50,000, or perhaps an internship with Tesla, in exchange for downing the account, money he said could help him pay for college or buy a new car.
While commercial air traffic trackers do exist already, such as Stratos Private Flight Tracker, certain individuals such as Musk have their flights blocked on this platform. However, Sweeney's flight tracker uses public ADS-B data, which can track private jets equipped with ADS-B, meaning Musk can't hide his movements from the account.
In an interview, Sweeney, who says he is a fan of Musk and his work, said on his decision to create the tracker:
"I knew he had a plane, you know, as a fan of SpaceX and Tesla stuff. I thought the Elon Musk's Jet bot would reveal like where he's going and what business he's doing. Companies in flight tracking have millions in revenue per year. Just a small cut of what they make would be good revenue for me."
It is unclear whether Musk will make another offer to the student, or whether it will be accepted.
Sweeney is known to track a large number of other high-profile individuals, including Bill Gates and former US president Donald Trump.
[Based on reporting by: Bloomberg]
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