Meta cracks down on accounts tracking private jets owned by Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Taylor Swift

Jack Sweeney, a Florida college student who runs several jet-tracking accounts, said in a post on Threads on Tuesday that his pages where he tracks flights by Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Taylor Swift, Kim Kardashian, and others have been suspended on Instagram and Threads without warning.

Accounts tracking Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former President Donald Trump were also suspended after a Fortune report, Sweeney said.

“No matter the intent, this situation reflects poorly on Meta,” he wrote of the Facebook parent company.

He added that across platforms like Threads and Musk-owned X $TWTR (X) (formerly Twitter), 38 of his accounts have been removed. In a separate post, Sweeney said, “Today feels like December 15th 2022” — referring to the day when Sweeney’s X account tracking Musk, @ElonJet, was permanently taken down.

“These platforms don’t care about transparency,” Sweeney said. “They selectively enforce their rules, allowing some users to stay while others are shut down without reason.”

Meta and X did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“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,” Meta told TechCrunch in an emailed statement.

Sweeney blasted the response on Threads, questioning why the tech giant announced its reasoning after the fact without communicating with Sweeney or the public. “They wanted it to go unnoticed,” he wrote.

The account he used to post updates about Swift, @TaylorSwiftJets, was among the first to be suspended on Meta-owned platforms, Sweeney said. Swift’s attorney sent a cease-and-desist letter to Sweeney back in December, threatening to sue him over accusations of “stalking and harassing behavior,” The Washington Post reported.

He argued that the suspension of that account while others remained active was “a clear case of selective enforcement,” pointing to the pop superstar’s partnership with Meta.

For his part, Sweeney has claimed that his tracking accounts don’t violate any rules, given that they share information that’s publicly available through the Federal Aviation Administration.