Tesla CEO and otherwise prolific businessman Elon Musk was recently made aware of a Twitter account that left him feeling a little uneasy. In fact, he took it rather personally, messaging the creator himself to ask that it be taken down.
However, the creator wasn't willing to let go of it so easily, and so a bit of back and forth ensued between the two regarding the account's future.
But the context is certainly not what he expected it to be.
Nineteen-year-old Jack Sweeney had an interesting exchange with the entrepreneur last fall, when he received a DM that just said, "Can you take this down? It is a security risk."
He was referencing an account called @ElonJet, a bot account that tracks the movements of Musk's private jet. The account's bio says it uses "public ADS-B data" to track the departures and arrivals.
Sweeny has made 15 different plane-tracking accounts, with each one following a high-profile person like Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates, with Musk's being the most popular.
His first response back was, "Yes I can but it’ll cost you a Model 3 only joking unless?”
Musk was still very security-focused, saying "I don’t love the idea of being shot by a nutcase."
So, Musk decided to take another approach.
Sweeny says he's never made more than $20 a month, so Musk made his move. He offered $5000 to delete the account and help prevent "crazy people" from tracking his location.
Sweeny's rebuttal? "Any chance to up that to $50k? It would be great support in college and would possibly allow me to get a car maybe even a Model 3.”
Sweeny isn't too upset, though. He says that running his accounts has benefited him in other ways, like learning how to code and even gaining a part-time job with UberJets, a personal flight booking service, as an application developer.
Not to mention the chance to chat with a man he's looked up to for years.
He also did acknowledge in a tweet from her personal account that some Elon fans might have been using the @ElonJet account in ways they shouldn't. "We need to remember to keep our boundaries if we don't it may have to come down or may forcibly be taken down. ElonJet was started to track business moves not to have people ambush Elon at airports," he [wrote](https://twitter.com/JxckSweeney/status/1477888979391455235).
h/t: Protocol
