What Happened: Sweeney, on his personal Twitter account, said that while his @ElonJet handle still existed, it had been shadow banned. Using Musk’s “Twitter Files” moniker, he alluded to a deeper conspiracy behind the reasoning for his shadow ban.
“Internal messages obtained by an anonymous Twitter employee explained to me that on 'Dec 2 2022 your account @elonjet was visibility limited/restricted to a severe degree internally,'” the 19-year-old said in his version of the Twitter Files.
He added screenshots of what seemed to be a message from Ella Irwin, vice president of Twitter Trust and Saftey, to a Twitter employee, which asked them to apply visibility filtering to the @ElonJet handle immediately.
Though, it seems the shadow ban didn’t last long — leading Sweeney to say that his public calls about his tracker caused the social media platform to backtrack.
It appears @ElonJet is longer banned or hidden in anyway. I think Twitter noticed my tweets and back tracked. Guilty in my book. pic.twitter.com/MRxVbPaXxS
— Jack Sweeney (@JxckSweeney) December 12, 2022
Why It Matters: Sweeney, who had been offered $5,000 by Musk earlier in January to delete the account, counteroffered and asked Musk for $50,000. While the richest man in the world didn’t accept the deal, Musk said he’d think about it.
See Also: Elon Musk Lets Loose Another Batch Of Twitter Files That Point To Existence Of 'Secret Blacklists'
Photo: Courtesy of Thomas Hawk on Flickr
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