Tesla boss offers $5,000 to takedown in DM exchange, but the 19-year-old responds: ‘Any chance to increase that to $50K?”
The world’s wealthiest person, Elon Musk, has been at odds with a Florida student and aviation enthusiast of 19 years.
Jack Sweeney developed the Tweet bot @ElonJet. This tracker tracks Musk’s private Gulfstream jet and provides real-time updates about its location.
Musk, co-founder and chief executive at Telsa and SpaceX discovered the Twitter account, and asked Sweeney for permission to remove it. “Can you take it down?” It is a security threat,” Musk, who amassed an estimated $220bn fortune wrote in a direct message to the teenager. Musk wrote, “I don’t like the idea of being shot at by a nutcase.”
Sweeney made public a series messages in which Musk offered Sweney a deal. “How about $5k to this account and general helping make it more difficult for crazy people track me?”
Sweeney tried to negotiate. Sweeney tried to negotiate. It would be great help in college and could possibly allow me to buy a car, perhaps even a Tesla Model 3.
Musk said he would consider the offer and then decline it, saying that “it doesn’t feel right” to pay to close this down.
Sweeney stated that he decided to make the correspondence public in an effort to get Musk back to the negotiation table. “I’ve done a lot on this and 5k does not suffice… ” Sweney told Insider that he did this “[to] make up for] all the fun I have with this, working on it.
“He chose to go the opposite direction of me so why would I not follow his lead?”
Sweeney claimed that he offered to delete the account for Musk’s internship, but Musk had not replied to the offer.
Sweeney claimed that he created the account to support Musk’s work. He said, “I knew that he had the jet and I just knew that it would reveal his business and where he’s going.”
He also has accounts to track the private jets Bill Gates’ and Jeff Bezos. The tracker account states that “we track the plane, not who may or might not be aboard.”
