Meta has suspended several accounts that monitored the private jet flights of celebrities and tech moguls, including Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Kim Kardashian and Elon Musk among others.
Jack Sweeney, the Florida-based college student who was fired from X by Musk for managing an account that tracked flights on the billionaire’s private jet, announced that Zuckerberg has also pulled the plug on similar flight-tracking accounts on Instagram and Threads.
“Jet Tracking on Instagram and Threads got zucked,” Sweeney wrote in a message he posted on his social media account.
“Today brings on a sense of déjà vu, reminding me of all my accounts that have been suspended on Twitter,” Sweeney wrote.
According to Sweeney, the accounts were “blacked out” without warning from Meta.
“Over the course of the day, all my other tracking accounts celebrityjets, kimkjets, kyliejennerjets, bezosjets, zuckerbergjets – were suspended,” he wrote.
Sweeney claimed that similar flight tracking accounts were dedicated to former President Donald Trump and the governor of Florida. Ron DeSantis was allowed to stay up, though they too were eventually deactivated after another publication wrote an article pointing out how they were the only accounts that were active.
“The behavior is consistent: these platforms operate without transparency and appear to make arbitrary decisions,” Sweeney wrote.
According to Sweeney, his plane tracking page dedicated to Taylor Swift was removed from Instagram 10 months ago. But the service allowed his other monitoring accounts to remain open.
Sweeney accused Meta of “showing a clear case of selective enforcement.”
The post has requested a comment from Meta.
“Given the risk of physical harm to individuals and in accordance with the recommendation of the independent Oversight Board, we have disabled these accounts for violating our privacy policy,” a Meta spokesperson said in an emailed statement to TechCrunch .
Last December, lawyers for Swift, the pop superstar singer, threatened Sweeney with legal action. They sent him a cease and desist letter saying Swift would have “no choice but to pursue all legal remedies” if he didn’t stop his “stalking and harassing conduct.”
In February, Swift sold one of her private jets after news of her lawyers’ letter to Sweeney surfaced.
In May, President Biden signed into law a measure that allows private jet owners to anonymize their registration information — making it harder to track their flights.
Despite the new regulations, Sweeney told Thrillist in May that it’s still possible for private jet enthusiasts to monitor celebrity flights since so few people fly those routes, and he’s often fed information from fans.
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Image Source : nypost.com