Meta has banned a series of accounts that post location updates on private jets belonging to some of the world’s richest and most powerful people, including Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and former President Donald Trump.
Those accounts have been deleted from Threads and Instagram, and corresponding Facebook accounts will be deleted soon, Andy Stone, Meta’s communications director, told NBC News.
The accounts, run by a Florida college student named Jack Sweeney, also track Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Kim Kardashian, Kylie Jenner, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. Some still exist on other platforms, including Bluesky.
In a Signal conversation with NBC News, Sweeney defended his flight tracker project.
“It has journalistic value, reveals obviously many parts of a CEOs work or what partnerships may occur. Now not only that, but also it brings awareness to the very fact they are flying and the climate side,” he said, referring to the carbon emissions related to jet travel and their connection to climate change.
Stone, Meta’s communications director, said in an email that the company decided on the ban because of “the risk of physical harm to individuals” and cited a recommendation from the company’s independent Oversight Board in 2022 that it remove references to an individual’s residences.
That recommendation does not mention private flights, but Meta took them as “broadly applicable to personally identifiable information,” Stone said.
Meta has shown an increasingly heavy hand in moderating what users can share on Facebook, Instagram and Threads. In February, the company announced it would stop recommending accounts that post “political content,” a broad category that can includes references to governments or elections.
The jet-tracking accounts have been a popular resource for journalists and watchers of the high-profile figures, but have also become a significant flashpoint in recent years.
In 2022, soon after buying Twitter (now X), Elon Musk banned the account from posting his jet’s movements, as well as the ones for Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, and Bezos, the executive chairman of Amazon.
Musk said he considered the accounts as violating the social media platform’s rules against doxxing — the posting of someone’s personal information, which is largely considered to be a threat to safety.
Musk also threatened legal action against Sweeney at the time, but did not actually file a complaint against him.
Sweeney later started accounts on the platform that posted the same information on a daylong delay, which are still up on the platform.
Sweeney said he doesn’t plan to make similar delayed accounts on Meta, saying, “They aren’t being transparent.”
Stone would not specify whether the policy change applies to accounts on a delay, saying, “The determination would be based on safety considerations.”
Sweeney has also been threatened by attorney’s working for music star Taylor Swift. Sweeney said Meta removed the accounts tracking Swift’s jet earlier this year.
Jet location information can be obtained in several different ways. The Federal Aviation Administration provides tracking information for many flights, but also allows some aircraft owners and operators to obscure that data from the public. Still, jet-tracking services have been able to obtain flight information for high-profile individuals using hardware that intercepts signal-outputs specific to each jet, according to Business Jet Traveler.
