Tesla CEO Elon Musk has now blocked teenager Jack Sweeney on social media.

Jack Sweeney by no means supposed to get right into a standoff with Elon Musk.

But Sweeney, 19, says he is now been blocked by the billionaire on social media — after turning down $5,000 to close down a Twitter service that tracks Musk’s non-public jet, and making an unrequited demand for $50,000 or at the very least an internship alternative.

“I knew he had a plane, you know, as a fan of SpaceX and Tesla stuff,” Sweeney mentioned in an interview. “I thought the Elon Musk’s Jet bot would reveal like where he’s going and what business he’s doing.”

He nonetheless hopes Musk will come again to the bargaining desk, however within the meantime is launching a enterprise — known as Ground Control — that screens the flight exercise of further high-interest planes. Sweeney, a freshman on the University of Central Florida, launched “Elon Musk’s Jet” in June 2020, and now additionally desires to become profitable by monitoring different outstanding billionaires together with Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.

What might have began as a passion has the potential to develop into a profitable enterprise for the teenager. Firms together with Nasdaq Data Link have begun providing non-public and company aviation intelligence to purchasers who hope to get a leg up with important enterprise data. Atypical company journey can present clues about an organization’s enterprise exercise, mergers and acquisitions and extra.

“Companies in flight tracking have millions in revenue per year,” Sweeney mentioned. “Just a small cut of what they make would be good revenue for me.”

However, launching a enterprise offering real-time location knowledge of personal aircrafts presents each privateness and authorized considerations. Colby Howard, the president of Paragon Intel — which offers company aviation intelligence by means of its product JetMonitor — warns that incomes a revenue from offering this type of data might have ramifications very similar to it did for App Annie, another knowledge supplier that acquired hit with fees from the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2021.

“The cowboy days of scraping data and selling it for hundreds of thousands of dollars are long gone,” Howard mentioned. “You can’t just milk it out for as much as you can because there could be legal issues as well.”

Sweeney says Musk first reached out to him in November final 12 months, requesting the account be shut down as a result of the Tesla CEO seen it as a safety danger. But he refused and turned down a financial supply to place an finish to the service.

“The amount of time and dedication I have put into it is cool — like, 5K isn’t enough to drop it,” Sweeney mentioned, including that he began the challenge in highschool.

Instead, the Florida teen made a counteroffer of $50,000, which he hoped may assist pay for school or a Tesla Model 3. Musk — whose web value surged greater than $21 billion on Monday to virtually $242 billion — demurred. He blocked all social media accounts linked to the Florida teen on Sunday evening, Sweeney mentioned.

“You know, it’s kinda strange, he wants it down and seems like he’s really mad,” Sweeney mentioned.

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