The account that tracks the billionaire's private jet was suspended by Musk on Wednesday, but he didn't address other accounts that follow celebrities' travels.
Donald Trump and Mark Zuckerberg are just two of the public figures that Jack Sweeney tracks on his 30 jet- tracking accounts on the social networking site.
There was a notice on the account that said it had been suspended because it violated the rules. His other jet- tracking accounts were still posting travel updates as of Wednesday.
A request for comment was not responded to by the three people.
Sweeney's accounts use bots to post travel data from the ADS-B Exchange, which is an independent jet- tracking website that uses publicly available data to display an aircraft's location
Musk said on Saturday that "Bots are in for a real surprise" as he spoke about his plans to eliminate them. According to a report by Platformer, real users were accidentally blocked from accessing the site while trying to get rid of fake accounts.
Insider confirmed that Sweeney's account had been shadowbanned, or partially blocked without his knowledge, after he said in a thread that he learned from an anonymous employee that his account had been shadowbanned.
Sweeney shared a picture of an internal message from the head of trust and safety asking her team to apply heavy visibility filters to the account to limit its reach.
In November, Musk said he wouldn't remove Jack Sweeney's account, despite his concern about how it could affect his safety in the past.
"My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk," the billionaire said about a week after buying the social media platform.
Sweeney thought it was likely that Musk would try to shut down the account. The college student turned down a $5,000 offer from Musk to take down the account because he didn't want to be shot by a nutcase.
Before Musk took control of the accounts, the FAA had implemented two free programs that could help the planes fly without being noticed.
LADD allows private aircraft owners to avoid plane- tracking software that uses FAA data by limiting the amount of aircraft data displayed. The tail numbers will not be seen by the public during a search.
The second program is called the "privacy ICAO aircraft address", which allows aircraft owners to substitute their tail number for a temporary one not used by any other plane, allowing them to fly without being detected.
According to the FAA, over 300 PIAs have been issued since the beginning of the year, but they still do not guarantee absolute privacy.
The data from the aircraft that broadcasts information like speed andGPS location is used by the exchange. The website displays LADD and PIA planes, but it won't show the tail number of the latter, though it will note if the plane is part of either program.
The FAA told Insider that Freedom of Information Act requests and airports are other ways to track PIA planes.
"Elon Musk has a plane that he flies out of Texas and he flies to the same airports as everyone else," Sweeney said.
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