According to Jack Sweeney, the guy behind the Twitter account that tracks Elon Musk’s private jet, his account has been “shadowbanned” due to the Tesla CEO’s platform takeover.
Sweeney, the programmer who created the automated account @ElonJet, stated in a Sunday Twitter thread that the platform had taken action against the automated account.
He further claimed that on December 2, an unidentified Twitter official informed him that the plane-tracking account’s “visibility was limited/restricted to a severe degree internally.”
The account has almost 517,000 followers as of December 12. Sweeney tweeted what appeared to be an internal Twitter message from Twitter’s head of Trust and Safety, Ella Irwin, which included a request that the account is subject to “heavy VF” – visibility filtering.
Sweeney told Insider that he had believed “for quite a while” that the account had been “search banned/ search suggestion banned” before reaching out to Twitter.
Shadowbanning is the process through which a profile and its postings become less accessible without the user being aware of the filtering. For example, according to Insider, several Twitter users have reported being unable to browse for or tag the account via suggested users.
Musk has condemned the practice of shadowbanning, stating that the platform is working on a tool that will alert users when they have been subjected to it.
He’s publicly criticized the account following his plane before, claiming it’s a security danger and offering to buy the account.
Musk has previously stated that he would not deactivate the jet-tracking account in response to concerns about free speech.