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Elon Musk Tried To Buy Off A Teen Who Runs A Twitter Account Tracking His Private Jet—And He Was Not Having It

John Sundholm
Jan. 31, 2022
Elon Musk Tried To Buy Off A Teen Who Runs A Twitter Account Tracking His Private Jet—And He Was Not Having It
Theo Wargo/Getty Images for TIME

At a net worth of $269 billion, Tesla CEO and co-founder Elon Musk may be the world's richest man, but it hasn't saved him from being hustled by a teenager.

Musk is currently embroiled in a stand-off with a 19-year-old, Jack Sweeney, who runs a Twitter bot that tracks his private jet. Musk offered the teen $5000 to shut the account down and assist him with advice on how to make the jet less trackable.

But the teen basically said "LOLNAH," telling Musk that the joy the jet-tracker brings him is nearly priceless and coming back with a counter-offer ten times higher.

And the internet can't stop cheering.

It all began when Musk found out about the bots Sweeney had created to track his jet and DM'd him to request he shut down the account, telling Sweeney it was a "security risk." Musk has tweeted recently that the constant barrage of people tracking his whereabouts has become a major problem.

In the DMs, Musk asked Sweeney:

"How about $5k for this account and generally helping make it harder for crazy people to track me?"

Sweeney countered:

"Sounds doable, account and all my help. Any chance to up that to $50K?"

Speaking to Insider, Sweeney said he'd done "a lot of work" on the project, and $5000 wasn't enough to even pay for "the fun I have in this, working on it," let alone the work itself.

Musk told Sweeney he'd think about it, but then came back and declined, saying it "doesn't feel right to pay to shut this down." Instead, he implemented a few basic changes Sweeney had mentioned, which Sweeney said he simply had to "work around" to keep his tracker going. And then he decided to go public about his dealings with Musk.

As he told Insider:

"He went the opposite way of me, so why wouldn't I go the opposite way of him?"

On Twitter, many people absolutely loved Sweeney's hustle of—as a reminder—the wealthiest man on Earth.








In addition to the notoriety Musk inadvertently gave him, Sweeney also told Insider his work on Musk's jet tracker is in his online portfolio.

Whether Musk will capitulate to Sweeney's demands remains to be seen, but at least he's learned a valuable lesson about paying people what they're worth and that's priceless.