Meta suspends celebrity plane tracking accounts like ElonJet
ElonJet, the social media account that tracks Elon Musk’s jet, has been banned once again.
But this time it’s not by Elon Musk and X, formerly Twitter. The account has been banned there since December 2022. (The platform allows an alternative version of ElonJet which posts Musk’s jet’s travels on a 24-hour delay.)
This time ElonJet has been banned by Mark Zuckerberg and Meta. And it’s not alone. Also banned this week were Facebook, Instagram, and Threads accounts that tracked the private jet travels of Zuckerberg, Musk, Donald Trump, Kim Kardashian, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Kylie Jenner, Ron DeSantis, among other celebrities.
Meta bans celebrity jet trackers
It appears that as of this week, real-time celebrity jet trackers are no longer permitted on Meta’s platforms.
“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 Meta spokesperson said in a statement.
The ban of the previously mentioned profiles was first confirmed by the owner of those accounts, college student Jack Sweeney. Sweeney also ran the ElonJet account on then-Twitter prior to Musk banning it.
In a statement, Sweeney shared that Meta had not reached out to him before suspending all of his jet tracking accounts.
“Today feels like December 15th 2022,” Sweeney said, referring to the day Twitter retroactively changed its policies and, controversially, removed Sweeney’s account.
At the time, Musk’s company also suspended a number of journalists who shared the ElonJet Instagram account on Twitter, including the author of this post.
After the policy change at Twitter, Sweeney moved many of his celebrity jet tracking accounts to Meta-owned platforms.
“It’s wild how tracking public info can be so controversial, my flight tracking accounts on Instagram and Threads hadn’t violated rules for years,” Sweeney shared on Threads. “The only account that was suspended before yesterday was the Taylor Swifts [sic] jet tracking account, when Swifts [sic] team requested Meta to remove the account last Dec/Jan.”
Sweeney uses ADS-B flight tracking data, which is publicly available information required by the FAA, to track these celebrity jets. Numerous flight tracking websites provide this information to the public. While Meta cited privacy concerns as the reason behind the bans, the jet tracking data does not show who is onboard the aircraft nor does it provide information as to where they travel before or after the flights.