• Despite promising not to ban it, ElonJet has been banned.
• What’s more is that Twitter has updated its Private Information and Media Policy to ban location sharing.
• These changes come after a car carrying Musk’s son was attacked.

You may have heard of or even seen the Twitter account going by ElonJet. The account used to use publicly available data to track Elon Musk’s private jet.

We say used to because Musk has seemingly had enough of publicly accessible data being published on Twitter. Yes that sentence was as bizarre to type as it was to read.

This hasn’t come from left field however as the billionaire claims that a “crazy stalker” tried to intimidate a car they thought was carrying Musk. In reality, Musk’s son was in the vehicle.

However, after this incident Musk has now taken to changing Twitter’s Private Information Policy to make sharing location data, even publicly available location data an offence worth of a suspension.

“When someone shares an individual’s live location on Twitter, there is an increased risk of physical harm. Moving forward, we’ll remove Tweets that share this information, and accounts dedicated to sharing someone else’s live location will be suspended,” the social media firm said in a thread.

With this in mind however, the actions taken against Jack Sweeney who created ElonJet seem extreme. As The Verge reports, the creator of these bots has had their personal account suspended, representing yet another promise Musk made only to go back on it later.

My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 7, 2022

In an about face on that stance, the Twitter policy now reads that anybody sharing somebody else’s live location information will be automatically suspended.

Much like Musk’s other decisions, this one isn’t going down very well. Many have pointed to far-right accounts sharing location information be being able to continue using the social network. Others have pointed out the tweet above and asked what changed. Some users have gone so far as to suggest that Musk is making up rules for Twitter as he goes.

However, we should point out that Musk’s aircraft is no longer appearing in public trackers per a request from him or somebody with the authority to do so. This coupled with his son’s life being in danger after the “crazy stalker” incident and perhaps Musk has realised, like so many others before him, that Twitter can be a real danger.

Twitter users are still able to share their own live location data but we aren’t sure how the platform will determine whether a person is sharing their own data. The social network goes on to say that sharing historical data is not an offence nor is sharing location data of a public event.

You can and should read the full Private Information and Media Policy here although given how quickly things change at Twitter, you may want to check this regularly.