Elon Musk offered a Twitter account $5,000 to go offline. The Twitter account is called “Elon Musk’s Jet”, which as the name implies tracks the use of Musk’s private jet.
The account uses a bot to monitor the jet’s publicly available air traffic data. The account is owned by a 19-year-old college student named Jack Sweeney.
According to a report by Protocol, Sweeney got a DM in the fall of 2021 from Musk, asking him to take down the account saying it was a security risk. Drive Tesla has been able to verify the authenticity of the messages.
Musk initially offered a generous payment of $5,000 to take down the account, one which only makes Sweeney about $20 per month.
Feeling like he could get more money out of the world’s richest person, Sweeney countered with, “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”.
Musk said he would think about it but has not yet responded to Sweeney. The Twitter account is also still active, with over 91,000 followers at the time of publication, 7,000 more than when Protocol first published their article.
Earlier this month, Musk tweeted out that social media accounts that track his movements are becoming a security issue.
Yeah, unfortunately this is becoming a security issue
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 18, 2022
