Jack Sweeney, a 19-year- old teen from Florida was offered $5000 from Elon Musk. However, the teen rejected the offer and said that it was not enough.
This college fresher, Jack Sweeney developed about a dozen other flight bot accounts that track the travels of high-profile personalities including Bill gates and Jeff Bezos.
Elon Musk gave him the offer to delete his Twitter account that tracks the billionaire’s private jet. Moreover, Elonjet which has more that 150,000 followers uses a bot developed by Sweeney.
By this they are able to monitor Musk’s flight. Then they post tweets about the whereabouts of the plane. It also tracks the takes off or lands and the duration of each trip of Elon Musk.
According to the CNN Business, the initial message came from Musk on November 30. “Can you take this down? Musk asked Sweeney, “It’s a security risk.”
It is said that the Tesla and SpaceX CEO offered the teenager $5000 to help prevent “crazy people” from tracking his flights. However, Sweeney rejected the offer and asked for $50,000, saying he could use the money for college and maybe a Tesla (TSLA) Model 3.
Sweeney has been a fan of SpaceX since the first Falcon Heavy launch in 2018. Sweeney says “$5000 is not enough for how much I get out of it. It doesn’t replace anything, like the enjoyment factor”.
Earlier, Sweeney offered Musk some technical advice too. He told the billionaire about a blocking program he could use to counter flight tracking programs.
Apparently, Musk is currently using the blocking program. However, the question now arises if Sweeney is still able to track Musk’s flights despite the blocking program? When asked, Sweeney said “It’s just a bit more complicated”.
