Musk (Associated Press)
Jack Sweeney, a 19-year-old teenager, told the media on Wednesday that Tesla CEO Musk recently proposed to pay him $5,000 in exchange for shutting down a Twitter account that tracks and publishes information about Musk's private flights.
Sweeney used the bots he wrote to run 15 Twitter accounts that track celebrity flights. When these people take off or land at the airport in a plane, the robot automatically tweets.
Of those 15 accounts, the account that tracks Musk's private jet has the most followers, with more than 97,000 followers. This popularity led Musk to send a private message directly to Sweeney.
"I don't like the idea of being shot by a crazy person." Musk said in the message and said he was willing to offer $5,000 for Sweeney to close the account.
"Is it possible to raise the amount to $50,000?" It would be a lot of support for me to go to college and might let me buy a car, or even a Tesla Model 3. Sweeney replied to Musk's message in this way.
According to Sweeney, his last exchange with Musk occurred a week ago, when Sweeney offered that if Musk gave him an internship, he would delete his account without compensation. Sweeney said Musk has not yet opened to read the message.
Sweeney also explained to Musk how he was able to find publicly available data about his private jet and use it to create an algorithm that automatically posted the status of Musk's flights on Twitter.
While Musk's flight status is reportedly publicly available, only those with a high level of knowledge of the industry know where to find that information.