NEWS | CURRENT EVENTS | TWITTER | ELON MUSK | RUSSIA
Elon Musk’s Stalker Has a New Mission
After a public online scuffle with Elon Musk, he’s back in the news.
Florida college student Jack Sweeney made headlines when he and Elon Musk got into a Twitter feud.
Now he’s back in the news once again.
What was the feud with Elon Musk about?
While some people pick up run-of-the-mill hobbies like crocheting, gardening, or bread-making, Jack Sweeney spent his time tracking the whereabout of Musk’s private jet and posting the location details on Twitter.
He also tracks SpaceX aircrafts as well on a separate Twitter account.
Every time he gets access to data to track a new aircraft or set of aircrafts, he creates a new Twitter bot account dedicated to it.
Watching Netflix and binge-eating popcorn are my thing. Creating Twitter bots to track aircrafts is his thing.
Finding out about private jet Twitter bot and not being too pleased about someone keeping tabs on his movements so closely, Elon Musk offered Jack Sweeney $5,000 to stop tracking his private jet.
Musk probably thought it was a generous offer for a college freshman. But Jack turned the cash offer down.
$5,000 sounds like a nice little reward for simply deactivating a Twitter account.
In the heat of the moment, I would’ve probably accepted the $5,000 and my 15 minutes of fame, deactivated the Twitter bot, and moved on with my life.
And if I was a true hustler (and very unscrupulous), I might consider building bots to track other high-profile people’s movements with the sole purpose of getting them to pay me to take them down.
Note: Jack Sweeney did not create the private jet tracker for personal gain like I alluded to in the paragraph above detailing what I would do if I was 1) creating private jet tracker Twitter bots like Jack Sweeney and 2) greedy.
Unfortunately, $5,000 was a far cry from the new Tesla that Sweeney asked for instead.
Musk rejected Sweeney’s request, so the private jet Twitter bot remains up and running on Twitter today, much to the chagrin of Elon Musk.
You can read more about that here.
But now, in addition to tracking the whereabout of Elon Musk’s private jet and two SpaceX aircrafts, Jack Sweeney’s got a new mission and two new Twitter bots to match.
There’s a War Going on Right Now
Right now, Russia is attacking Ukraine.
There are plenty of stories covering it that will give you the who, what, when, where, and why. But for up-to-the-minute coverage, you can check out CNN’s website.
War is no good.
But while Ukraine is suffering under fire right now, some people are profiting handsomely.
To hear more about how scammers are cashing in on the Russian invasion, you can read this story:
Prior to this attack on Ukraine, Sweeney’s followers urged him to track Putin’s private jet. Putin has been infamous for a very long time, and Sweeney’s fans were eager to see Sweeney track Putin’s whereabouts as well.
At first, Sweeney didn’t bite. But in the midst of the recent invasion, the requests for a Putin tracker got louder and louder.
Eventually, Sweeney conceded to the requests and created Twitter bots that track Putin’s private jet, as well as others belonging to Russian oligarchs.
Tracking Vladimir Putin & His Gang
Jack Sweeney created two new Twitter bots to track Putin’s and other Russian oligarchs’ private jets:
He figured out that these jets used by Putin, Roman Abramovich, Leonid Mikhelson, and Alisher Usmanov utilize the same technology that allowed him to track Elon Musk’s private jet, which made tracking the aircrafts of these high-profile individuals that much easier.
Note: At this time, Sweeney’s Putin tracker only tracks the movements of Putin’s private jet within Russia. Any travel outside of Russia is not included in the feed. Sweeney suspects this is because Putin caught wind of his Twitter bot and did something to limit the data Sweeney could access.
Though Sweeney assumed the jets wouldn’t be moving much as Putin, especially, might want to lay low at this time, Sweeney has found this actually isn’t the case.
The jets are still flying, still active. Putin and his friends are still on the move.
You can read more about this here.
What’s the Goal?
Sweeney has made it clear that he has no intention of profiting off these new Twitter bots (though he’s still hoping for the free Tesla from Elon Musk).
He created these new bots because of the overwhelming requests he received from his followers to do so, but he claims to have no other intentions beyond that.
For him, it’s partially about appeasing fans while following an interest. But he has mentioned that he thinks it would be cool to see one of the private jets get seized.
Otherwise, he plans to continue tracking more aircrafts as he’s able to get his hands on more flight data, even though he’s received death threats from people trying to get him to stop.
On a small scale, it seems like a simple interest project. Or at most, an obsession with planes and celebrities.
But for Sweeney, it’s more than that.
He’s currently studying information technology and hopes to get a job as a software engineer in the aviation industry after college.
It’ll be interesting to see who else is on his radar in terms of private jet tracking.
And I’m sure his new-found fame will attract a variety of employment opportunities for him, probably even before he graduates, if that hasn’t happened already.
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