Meta bans accounts tracking private jets for Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk

By Kurt Wagner
Facebook parent company Meta Platforms Inc has removed several accounts across Threads and Instagram that were used to track celebrities’ private jets, including the jet owned by its Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, citing a risk of “physical harm.”
 

The accounts, which rely on publicly available information to track a jet’s location and CO2 emissions, among other details, were banned without warning this week after Meta updated its privacy policy. The newly banned accounts include those tracking planes for celebrities, including Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner, and business leaders, including Zuckerberg, former Amazon.com Inc. CEO Jeff Bezos, and Tesla Inc CEO and X owner Elon Musk.

Meta pointed to a recommendation from its Oversight Board, an external group tasked with reviewing the company’s rules and controversial posts, as part of the justification for the change. That recommendation, from early 2022, advised that Meta remove “private residential information” from its site even if that information was publicly available.

“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,” a company spokesperson said in a statement. 

Many of the accounts impacted were operated by Jack Sweeney, a Florida college student who has gained notoriety by tracking celebrity jets. In a letter posted to his Threads account, Sweeney said he “received no communication from Meta” about the bans before they were initiated. “These platforms operate without transparency, and it feels like they make arbitrary decisions,” he wrote. 

It’s not Sweeney’s first run-in with a tech company or billionaire that wanted his accounts removed. Musk has long taken issue with Sweeney’s account that tracked his private plane, once calling the information his “assassination coordinates.” Shortly after buying X in late 2022, he banned Sweeney’s account and made a new rule that forbid sharing someone else’s location in real-time. Sweeney still tracks Musk’s jet on X, but posts the jet’s location on a 24-hour delay. 

Earlier this year, pop star Taylor Swift’s lawyers demanded Sweeney stop tracking her private plane. Around the same time, Meta removed Sweeney’s accounts that were tracking Swift’s plane, but left his other accounts untouched. 

Sweeney says that he’s had 38 different accounts banned across Meta and X, the site formerly known as Twitter.