Jack Sweneey, Joe Raedle, Clive Mason/Getty Images
- Jack Dorsey encouraged the college student who tracks Elon Musk's private jet to keep on posting.
- He encouraged the student to post updates to Twitter rivals Bluesky and Nostr.
- The @ElonJet account got banned from Twitter after Musk took over.
Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey has doubled down on his explicit and implicit criticism of Elon Musk, encouraging the college student who tracks Elon Musk's private jet to keep posting on rival apps Bluesky and Nostr.
Dorsey, who has given money to both platforms and sits on Bluesky's board, got into a brief exchange on Bluesky with college student Jack Sweeney Saturday about the jet-tracking account. The @ElonJet originally started on Twitter but was banned in December after Musk took over the site.
"What's ur take on ElonJet?" the college student asked Dorsey.
"Keep on keepin on," Dorsey responded, adding: "Send updates here and to nostr."
Bluesky is a much-hyped Twitter-like app that is currently invite-only. It has more than 60,000 users, Insider previously reported, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Twitter comedy account Dril. The project originally started at Twitter while Dorsey served as CEO, but was spun out and is now run by Jay Graber.
Sweeney told Insider he joined the app on April 30 and set up his personal and @ElonJet accounts. "It has that enticing feeling like Twitter," he said.
When setting up his account, someone had already claimed the username @elonjet, so Sweeney asked the person if they could hand it over – and they did. "I wanted it in good hands," the owner told Sweeney.
He also followed Dorsey's advice and joined Nostr on Saturday.
Nostr, which stands for Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays, is an open protocol that aims to create a censorship-resistant global social network. Dorsey tweeted in December last year that he had donated just over a quarter million dollars in Bitcoin to its anonymous founder, @fiatjaf.
Nostr
Dorsey's remarks cement an apparent change of heart towards Musk. The entrepreneur had been vocally supportive through 2022 of Musk's acquisition of Twitter but, after mass firings and patchy site reliability, now says the billionaire shouldn't have done the deal. Dorsey hasn't posted on Twitter since January, but is active on both Bluesky and Nostr.
Sweeney created the original @ElonJet account in 2020, using public flight data to monitor the whereabouts the of billionaire's private jet. He shot to fame when Musk offered him $5,000 to take down his Twitter account in January 2022.
The billionaire called the account a "security risk" and said he didn't want to be "shot by a nutcase." The student asked for $50,000 – but it never materialized.
When Musk acquired Twitter in October last year, Sweeney feared his account, @elonjet, would be banned. Musk said in November that he wouldn't remove the account.
But in December, Sweeney's more than 30 accounts tracking celebrities' jets, including those of Mark Zuckerberg, Donald Trump, and Kim Kardashian, were all suspended. He promptly set up shop elsewhere, including Instagram, Discord, and Mastodon. He told Insider on Saturday, however, that Mastodon wasn't as enticing as Twitter or Bluesky.
About a week after the permanent ban, Sweeney set up a new Twitter account that had the same purpose as @elonjet, only it would be posting with a 24-hour delay to follow Twitter's new guidelines.
Musk didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.