Joe Rogan gave his take this week on 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 had suspended accounts belonging to Sweeney, including the @ElonJet account, after Musk expressed concerns about potential safety risks.
Rogan addressed the situation during a conversation with comedian Brian Simpson on the Dec. 28 episode of his podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience” — at one point referring to Sweeney’s banned account as “definitely weird” and not “a nice thing to do.”
Simpson described Sweeney’s banned tracking account as “a little creepy.”
“What is the point? He said he started to do it because he was a fan of Elon’s,” Rogan replied.
As The Post has reported, Musk originally sent Sweeney a Twitter direct message offering $5,000 last year to delete the @ElonJet account. Sweeney counter-offered by asking for $50,000, but Musk expressed reservations and eventually stopped replying to his messages.
The account used publicly available data to track the movements of Musk’s private jet.
“Elon, you gotta make an offer they can’t refuse,” Simpson said regarding the failed negotiation.
“Here’s the problem: how does this prevent other people from doing the exact same thing and doing the same thing and trying to get more money?” Rogan replied. “Where does it end? Like if that’s an industry now, tracking Elon’s jet?”
Simpson said he felt it was a “mistake” for Sweeney to release the details of Musk’s original offer.
“That’s also why I think it was a mistake to go public with it. Because the DMs weren’t public until he made them public, until the guy running the account made it public,” Simpson said.
“But is it a mistake for him because it’s getting him a lot of attention? People are paying attention to it. He might be able to monetize it. It’s weird though. It’s definitely weird and I would not like it at all. I don’t think it’s a nice thing to do,” Rogan said.
Musk said Twitter would ban “any account doxxing real-time location info” going forward. He has also threatened Sweeney with legal action over the account.
Meanwhile, Sweeney fired back in an exclusive interview with The Post, blasting Musk as a “full-on hypocrite” for banning the jet tracker account despite his public commitment to free speech.
Days after his original account was banned, Sweeney returned to Twitter with an account called @ElonJetNextDay, which tracks Musk’s private jet but publishes the information with a 24-hour delay. The account has already garnered more than 20,000 followers. (NYPost)
