Musk gadfly has a new jet to track – the one used by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/05/2023 (872 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Jack Sweeney, the 20-year-old college student who was once banned from Twitter for posting the real-time movements of Elon Musk’s jet, has a new aircraft in his sights: that of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

On Monday, Sweeney posted his first tweet on the account @DeSantisJet, which follows the movements of the official Florida jet DeSantis uses for state business. The tracker, like the one he created to follow Musk’s private jet, uses public flight information required by aviation authorities.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Sweeney said he also plans to track DeSantis flights on other private aircraft once he can identify them.

Like Sweeney’s revamped version of his Musk tracker @elonjet, the DeSantis Twitter tracker reports movements with a 24-hour delay. That delay complies with a Twitter rule change imposed shortly after the company suspended Sweeney’s original Musk tracking account in December. That came not long after the Tesla CEO bought the social media platform for $44 billion. Sweeney’s Twitter account was later restored.

By relying on public data, Sweeney’s tracker also sidesteps a Florida law signed by DeSantis on May 11 that requires state law enforcement agencies to keep the governor’s travel records secret.

Sweeney, who is a student at the University of Central Florida, tracks a variety of other private jets used by politicians, technology tycoons and celebrities. That list includes former President Donald Trump; Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg; and Taylor Swift and Kim Kardashian.

Like his other tracking accounts, Sweeney’s DeSantis tracker appears on a variety of social platforms ranging from Facebook and Instagram to smaller sites such as Telegram, Mastodon, and Nostr. His Musk tracker also uses accounts on BlueSky, a nascent Twitter alternative, and Truth, a Trump-founded social network. Only the Twitter-based trackers feature the 24-hour delay.

Sweeney said DeSantis is “just becoming someone that people want to know about.” The Florida Republican has long given signs of gearing up to run for president in the 2024 election, where he would contend with Trump and several other announced candidates.

The AP reported Tuesday that DeSantis plans to kick off his presidential campaign in a Twitter Spaces chat with Musk on Wednesday, citing two people with knowledge of the decision.