"ElonJet has arrived to Threads!" read Sweeney's
first post on Thursday from the account handle @elonmusksjet, which had over
21,000 followers as of Saturday morning.
ElonJet has tracked the movements of Musk's private jet
using data available in the public domain.
Post by @elonmusksjetView on Threads
In December Twitter, owned by Musk, suspended the ElonJet
account, with the billionaire threatening legal action against the account's
operator after saying his son had been mistakenly followed by a "crazy
stalker".
Musk had said in a tweet in November that his commitment to
free speech "extends even to not banning the account following my plane,
even though that is a direct personal safety risk".
Sweeney, a 20-year-old University of Central Florida
student, had tweeted in December that Ella Irwin, Twitter's Vice President of
trust and safety, requested the account be filtered and less visible to users.
In media interviews, Sweeney has said that he turned down a
$5,000 offer from the Tesla chief
executive officer in 2021 to shut down his bot account.
Meta-owned Threads, posing a direct challenge to Twitter,
garnered millions of users in hours, including prominent figures such as Kim
Kardashian, Jennifer Lopez and Democratic US Representative Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, as it seeks to take advantage of its rival's weakened state
after a series of chaotic decisions from Musk.
Sweeney, Twitter and Meta did not immediately respond to a
Reuters request for comment. © Reuters