Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, offered a 19-year-old $5,000 to shut down a Twitter account that follows his private flights.
Jack Sweeney uses a bot he designed to operate 15 flight-tracking accounts that automatically post when a celebrity’s flight departs or arrives at an airport
Sweeney’s account, which tracks Musk’s flights, has the most followers, with over 200,000, prompting Musk to write him a direct message.
“I don’t love the idea of being shot by a nutcase,” Musk said in the message, offering $5,000 for Sweeney to take it down, according to Protocol.
“Any chance to up that to $50k? It would be great support in college and would possibly allow me to get a car maybe even a Model 3,” Sweeney responded back.
Musk and Sweeney last communicated a week ago, when Sweeney stated he would remove the account for free provided Musk offered him an internship.
Sweeny demonstrated to Musk how he was able to use publicly accessible data about Musk’s private plane to construct an algorithm that automatically tweets the plane’s status.
