Elon Musk’s Jet Tracker Called Himself ‘Canary in the Coal Mine’ of Twitter CEO’s Free Speech Commitment — Before Getting Banned

A day before one of his most prominent Twitter accounts was suspended, Jack Sweeney gave an interview where he spoke about the broader implications for Elon Musk’s management of the social media platform.

Sweeney managed the @ElonJet Twitter account, which was known to online observers as the automated account that tracked the location of Musk’s private jet. Even though Musk publicly promised that he wouldn’t have the account banned despite his personal problem with it, the @ElonJet account was shadowbanned this week before it wound up getting permanently suspended on Wednesday.

The day before, Sweeney spoke to NewsNation’s Leland Vittert about the shadowbanning, which he explained as “If you don’t like people and you’re in charge, you probably are going to do something about it…That’s what would appear happened here.”

“I knew before Elon took over that I was search-banned, and Elon put out that tweet that he wouldn’t do anything to me because that’s how much he believes in free speech,” Sweeney said. “But if he tries to do something that people don’t really know about, then he’d probably do it.”

When asked to explain the importance of the issue, Sweeney described it as a test of Musk’s commitment to promoting free speech on Twitter.

“I’m like the canary in the coal mine,” he said. Vittert agreed that it would be a “fascinating” case study, noting how Sweeney also has accounts to track the private jets of others beyond Musk.

Watch above via NewsNation.