Jack Dorsey has expressed his support for a college student who tracks Elon Musk's private jet, encouraging them to continue posting updates on alternative social media platforms, Bluesky and Nostr, after the @ElonJet account was banned from Twitter. Dorsey, a co-founder of Twitter, has been critical of Elon Musk both implicitly and explicitly. He sits on the board of Bluesky and has provided financial support for both Bluesky and Nostr. Over the weekend, Dorsey engaged in a brief exchange on Bluesky with the college student, Jack Sweeney, about the jet-tracking account. Although the account was originally on Twitter, it was banned in December after Musk took over the site.
The college student asked Dorsey for his opinion on ElonJet. Dorsey replied, "Keep on keepin' on," and suggested that the student post updates to Bluesky and Nostr.
Bluesky is a Twitter-like application that has received a lot of attention, and is currently available by invitation only. According to a previous report by Insider, it has more than 60,000 users, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Twitter comedy account Dril. The project originally started at Twitter while Dorsey was CEO, but was later spun out and is now run by Jay Graber.
The student, Sweeney, told Insider that he joined Bluesky on April 30th and created both his personal account and the @ElonJet account. He said, "It has that enticing feeling like Twitter." When setting up his account, Sweeney discovered that someone had already claimed the @elonjet username, so he asked the person if they would be willing to hand it over. The previous owner agreed, stating that they wanted it to be in good hands.
On Saturday, the student also heeded Dorsey's advice and joined Nostr.
Nostr is an open protocol that aims to create a global social network that is resistant to censorship. Its name stands for "Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays." In December of last year, Dorsey tweeted that he had donated just over a quarter of a million dollars in Bitcoin to the anonymous founder of Nostr, who goes by the handle @fiatjaf.
Dorsey's recent remarks indicate a change in his attitude towards Musk. Although he had been vocal in his support of Musk's acquisition of Twitter throughout 2022, Dorsey now believes that the billionaire should not have made the deal, due to mass firings and site reliability issues. Although he hasn't posted on Twitter since January, Dorsey remains active on both Bluesky and Nostr.
The original @ElonJet account was created by Sweeney in 2020, and he used public flight data to track the whereabouts of Musk's private jet. Sweeney gained fame when Musk offered him $5,000 to take down his Twitter account in January 2022.
The student had asked Musk for $50,000 in exchange for taking down the @elonjet account, but Musk refused, citing security concerns and saying he didn't want to be a target for a potential attacker. However, Musk had previously indicated in November that he would not remove the account.
Despite this assurance, Sweeney's more than 30 accounts tracking celebrities' jets, including those belonging to Mark Zuckerberg, Donald Trump, and Kim Kardashian, were all suspended in December. He then set up accounts on Instagram, Discord, and Mastodon, though he found the latter to be less appealing than Twitter or Bluesky.
Following the permanent ban, Sweeney created a new Twitter account with the same purpose as @elonjet, but with a 24-hour delay to comply with Twitter's guidelines. Musk has not yet responded to a request for comment from Insider.
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