Joe Rogan spoke out this week about Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s recent controversial decision to permanently suspend an account created by college student Jack Sweeney that tracked the movements of the billionaire’s private jet.
Earlier this month, Twitter suspended Sweeney-owned accounts, including the @ElonJet account, after Musk raised concerns about potential security threats.
Rogan addressed the situation during a conversation with comedian Brian Simpson on the December 28 episode of his podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience” – at one point he referred to Sweeney’s banned account as “definitely weird” fairly than “a pleasant thing to do”.
Simpson described Sweeney’s blocked tracking account as “a bit scary”.
“What is it? He said he began doing it because he was an Elon fan,” Rogan replied.
As reported by The Post, Musk originally sent Sweeney a direct message on Twitter, offering $5,000 to delete his @ElonJet account last yr. Sweeney objected, asking for $50,000, but Musk expressed objections and eventually stopped responding to his messages.
The account used publicly available data to trace the movements of Musk’s private jet.
“Elon, you’ve got to make a suggestion you may’t refuse,” Simpson said of the failed negotiation.
“Here’s the issue: how does that stop other people from doing the exact same thing and doing the identical thing and attempting to get extra money?” Rogan replied. “Where does it end? For example, if it’s an industry now, tracking Elon’s jet?
Simpson said he believed it was Sweeney’s “mistake” to reveal details of Musk’s original offer.
“That’s why I believe it was a mistake to make it public. Because the DMs weren’t public until he made them public, until the guy running the account made them public,” Simpson said.
“But is it a mistake for him because he gets lots of attention. People concentrate to it. Maybe he can become profitable off of it. It’s weird though. It’s definitely weird and I would not prefer it in any respect. I do not think that is a pleasant thing,” Rogan said.
Musk said Twitter will block “any accounts doxxing real-time location information” in the longer term. He also threatened Sweeney with legal motion over the account.
Meanwhile, Sweeney fired back in an exclusive interview with The Post, calling Musk a “complete hypocrite” for blocking the jet tracker account despite his public commitment to free speech.
Just a few days after his original account was banned, Sweeney returned to Twitter with an account named @ElonJetNextDay, which tracks Musk’s private jet, but publishes the data 24 hours late. The account has already accrued over 20,000 followers.
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