If you want Jack Sweeney to stop publicly following your private jet on Twitter, take a leaf out of Mark Cuban’s book and offer the 19-year-old something better than money: friendship.
Sweeney, a sophomore at the University of Central Florida, is the teenager responsible for 30 automated Twitter accounts that collectively track the flights of hundreds of celebrities, politicians and billionaires — from Elon Musk and Kylie Jenner to a host of Russian oligarchs. And since he started his side hustle in June 2020, he says he’s only agreed to a single “do not track me” request.
In a February direct message on Twitter, Cuban asked Sweeney to shut down the @MCubansJets in exchange for his friendship and business advice, according to screenshots reviewed by CNBC Make It. “He said, ‘I’d be your friend,’ and I asked if I could meet him at a basketball game,” Sweeney, 19, tells CNBC Make It.
Sweeney says the pair negotiated in May — in the virtual exchange, Cuban said he would be willing to meet Sweeney at a Dallas Mavericks game next season — before reaching a deal. Sweeney appears to have held up his end: The account, which he designed as an auto-updating bot, hasn’t tweeted since April, and its bio says its code has been disabled.
Cuban declined CNBC Make It’s request for comment.
Sweeney’s loyalty appears to come at a price, and the friendship may be worth more than the money some billionaires are willing to pay: In January, Musk offered Sweeney $5,000 to stop tweeting about the planes’ location his private. Sweeney declined, demanding $50,000 instead. The account that tracks Musk’s flights, @ElonJet, is still active today, with more than 479,000 Twitter followers.
By comparison, Sweeney’s @MCubansJets account only has about 3,300 followers. Sweeney says that made it easier to accept Cuban’s takedown request: Taking down the least popular account in exchange for free networks was a no-brainer.
Sweeney says both Cuban and Musk have expressed personal safety concerns about flight tracking, but he doesn’t see that as a compelling argument: His code only transmits publicly available information from websites like the ADS-B Exchange, which which post the transmitted location, altitude and speed. from any federally regulated aircraft.
And, Sweeney adds, celebrities aren’t usually particularly private about owning jets in the first place. “People have private jets, they post all these pictures on them,” he says. “It’s not a secret.”
Sweeney says only one other person, an attorney for venture capitalist Grant Cardone, has asked him to stop tracking the flights. Like Cuban, the request came in a direct message on Twitter, according to footage reviewed by CNBC Make It. And like the @MCubansJets, the @CardoneJet account doesn’t have many followers: currently less than 2,000.
However @CardoneJet remains active on Twitter. Sweeney says he never responded to the lawyer’s request, who offered nothing in exchange for deactivating the account.
Sweeney says he hopes to eventually monetize his Twitter accounts, potentially by turning his personal website into an all-celebrity flight tracker or finding a way to offer carbon offsets for some of the flights he tracks. But for now, he adds, he just plans to keep increasing the number of flights the code can access.
“[I’m motivated] because people are still really interested in it,” says Sweeney.
Register now: Get smarter about your money and your career with our weekly newsletter
Don’t miss:
Teen Chasing Elon Musk’s Jet So Does Jeff Bezos & 125 Others: I Could Make ‘Some Kind Of Business Out Of This’
Mark Cuban Says It Was His Worst Shark Tank Investment Ever: ‘Next thing you know, all the money is gone’
