Teen who irked Elon Musk by tracking billionaires’ private jets says he’s been shadowbanned on Twitter

Jack Sweeney says a Twitter staffer told him his plane-tracking account was “visibility limited/restricted to a severe degree internally”

Jack Sweeney, the man behind the Twitter account tracking Elon Musk’s private jet, says the account has been “shadowbanned” following the Tesla CEO’s platform takeover.

Mr Sweeney, a programmer who set up the account @ElonJet, said in a Twitter thread on Sunday that the platform had taken action against the automated account.

He also said that an anonymous Twitter staffer told him that the plane-tracking account was “visibility limited/restricted to a severe degree internally” on 2 December.

As of 12 December, the account has more than 517,000 followers.

Mr Sweeney shared what seemed to be a message sent internally at Twitter from the head of Trust and Safety, Ella Irwin, including a request that the account be subject to “heavy VF” – visibility filtering.

Speaking to Insider, Mr Sweeney said he had believed “for quite a while” that the account had been “search banned/ search suggestion banned” before the Twitter staffer reached out.

Shadowbanning entails a profile and its posts becoming less visible without making the user aware of the filtering. A number of Twitter users have said that they were unable to search for or tag the account via suggested users, according to Insider.

Mr Musk has slammed the act of shadowbanning in the past, adding that the platform is developing a feature that will reveal to users when they have been subjected to the practice.

He has previously blasted the account tracking his plane, arguing that it’s a security risk and offering to buy the account. Mr Sweeney has set up more than 30 accounts tracking planes by sharing public information.

A number of accounts track planes of billionaires, such as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates of Microsoft.

Bernard Arnault, the CEO of LVMH, recently sold his private plane and began renting planes to avoid being tracked, Insider noted.

Mr Musk has said in the past that he wouldn’t ban the jet-tracking account because of his concerns regarding free speech.

The Independent has reached out to Twitter for comment.