Several Threads accounts showing publicly available data regarding the private jet travel of some of the world’s wealthiest and most famous people have been silenced.
The year-old social media platform, owned by Meta, on Monday abruptly suspended an account showing flight paths of the private jet owned by Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and cofounder of Meta, along with several other accounts showing similar data for the private jet use of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Kim Kardashian, and Kylie Jenner. On Friday, an account tracking Taylor Swift's jet was also suspended.
All of the accounts were maintained by Jack Sweeney, a college student who gained some public notoriety when Musk took over Twitter in 2022 and banned the same kind of jet tracker accounts, including the one Sweeney had tracking Musk’s own jet. Sweeney eventually moved much of his jet tracking activity to Threads after the dispute with Musk.
Posting to Threads from his personal account, Sweeney said that all of the jet tracker accounts he maintained on the Meta platform were suspended over the past few days, save for two: one following the jet used by former President Donald Trump and one following the jet used by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
“Quite strange,” Sweeney added. Not long after, the Trump and DeSantis jet accounts were also suspended.
A spokesman for Meta confirmed late Monday night that all of the accounts were removed: “Given the risk of physical harm to individuals, and in keeping with the independent Oversight Board’s recommendation, we’ve disabled these accounts for violating our privacy policy.” The spokesman pointed to a 2021 decision from the Oversight Board, which Meta operates, covering the "sharing of private residential information." The advisory decision indeed found that the sharing of private addresses or photos of residences, while they may be publicly accessible, is a violation of privacy. It makes no mention of flight path tracking.
Although all of the private jet data displayed in Sweeney’s Threads accounts is publicly available and maintained by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, the sharing of the information over social media has raised the ire of many of the celebrity jet owners, who complain that it infringes on their privacy.
Musk and Swift, although opposed to each other politically, have both threatened Sweeney with lawsuits, referring to the jet accounts as “assassination coordinates” (Musk) and “stalking and harassing behavior” (Swift).
Sweeney’s accounts do not show exactly where the planes or their occupants travel. Neither Musk nor Swift have taken formal legal action against him.
In a text message with Fortune, Sweeney said he had received "zero" explanation or opportunity to appeal. "If I log in it's just black."
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