A college freshman contacted by Elon Musk with a $5,000 offer to delete his Twitter account had a counterproposal at the ready: “Any chance to get that up to $50K?” Jack Sweeney was contacted by the billionaire last fall over a bot the 19-year-old had built to track the movements of Musk’s private jet. The account, @ElonJet, was “a security risk,” Musk wrote in a Twitter DM to Sweeney. The teen replied roughly seven hours later: “Yes I can but it’ll cost you a Model 3 only joking unless?” Musk told Sweeney that he didn’t relish “the idea of being shot by a nutcase” because of the account, which has 83,000 followers and uses publicly accessible flight data. When the mogul offered Sweeney $5,000, Sweeney asked, “Any chance to up that to $50k? It would be great support in college and would possibly allow me to get a car maybe even a Model 3.” Musk said he’d think about it then, according to tech outlet Protocol, never got back to Sweeney.
