The Twitter account ElonJet follows all flights made by business magnate Elon Musk’s private plane. Musk offered the 19-year-old owner of the account $5,000 to stop, but the teen thinks that amount is too low.
The tech site Protocol reports that Musk sent a personal message this week to the owner of the ElonJet account, 19-year-old Jack Sweeney. In it, the entrepreneur asked him to delete the account, because the information would pose a risk to his security. Sweeney half jokingly replied that he would take the account offline if Musk gave him a Tesla Model 3 as a gift.
@ElonJet is one of Sweeney’s 15 accounts that track the private flights of famous business people. The accounts automatically tweet when a plane takes off and lands. Sweeney also follows Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, among others, but the Musk account is by far the most popular, with more than 120,000 followers.
‘I will think about it’
Elon Musk fears that one of the tens of thousands of followers could use the information for malicious purposes. He told Sweeney that he was afraid that ‘crazy people’ could follow him. Musk asked Sweeney how much he earned with the account, to which he replied that it earns him about $20 a month. Musk then offered $5,000 to delete the account.
Sweeney responded with a counter-offer of $50,000. That money would help him with his studies and he said he wanted to buy a Tesla Model 3 . “I’ll think about it,” Musk said. Meanwhile, it appears that Sweeney is being ghosted by the business magnate. @ElonJet is happily tweeting for now.
Check out the other planes including the second SpaceX Jet! https://t.co/B7S3oE6D2j
— Elon Musk’s Jet (@ElonJet) September 26, 2020
Sweeney told Protocol that maintaining the accounts has already paid off for him. He gained experience with programming and got a part-time job at UberJets . The Musk fanatic also got the chance to talk to one of his idols, however brief that was.
Sweeney also asked Musk if he could do an internship at one of his companies, but the Tesla CEO has not yet responded. The teenager says he knows why the businessman is ignoring him. “I think he’s on vacation in Hawaii, if you watch @ElonJet.”