Jack Sweeney: Teen tracking Elon Musk's jet now turns down a free Tesla Model 3
A college freshman who is well-known on Twitter for tracking the location of Elon Musk's private jet has made headlines yet again for rejecting the offer for a free Tesla Model 3 from the tech mogul himself. Jack Sweeney, a 19-year-old student of information technology, manages the Twitter account @ElonJet, where he tracks Musk's private jet using bots and shares the live location publicly.
Elon Musk had previously offered $5,000 to Sweeney to take his account down but he eventually refused and sought an internship at Tesla instead. However, instead of an internship offer, Sweeney was offered a Tesla Model 3 by car-hire company Autonomy. CEO Scott Painter made the jaw-dropping offer to Sweeney on a three-year contract, in exchange for deleting the @ElonJet account, but Sweeney turned it down.
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"I told you I'm not interested in a subscription besides, there are numerous facts that suggest this is in conjunction with Elon," Sweeney said in response to Painter, He later told WSJ, "I want my own car. I don't want to have to give it back in three years. If I got an actual Tesla, then I would take it down."
Jack Sweeney has created over 15 Twitter bots to track the private planes of tech billionaires like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk. The account tracking Musk's jet is the most popular on Twitter with more than 354,000 active followers. Though the concept has gained popularity among social media users, Elon Musk is reportedly quite uncomfortable at the idea of 'crazy people' tracking his movements. In fact, in a DM conversation with Sweeney, he even told him, "I don't love the idea of being shot by a nutcase." He also expressed his disappointment at the ATC resources being publicly available, saying, "Air Traffic Control is so primitive."
However, Sweeney still refused to take down his tracking program that deploys sophisticated programs and collects data from multiple confidential sources. In fact, Musk tried to implement a blocking program to prevent Sweeney's bot from tracking, which failed. When Musk offered him $5,000 to remove the bot tracking his jet, Sweeney had responded, "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."
"I understand your view, but I hope that you would see my interest because I have been developing this since I was only in high school. Options other than remuneration like an internship would make taking it down a lot easier," he further told the billionaire tech mogul. It now remains to be seen whether the tech-savvy teen can secure an employment offer at Elon Musk's company.