Celebrity jet-tracking accounts have vanished from Threads and Instagram
www.theverge.com
It's a bad week for the creator of @ElonJet.

Jack Sweeney, who gained notoriety for his @ElonJet account on X and maintained many of the suspended accounts, said on Threads that the development is “reminiscent of all my accounts getting suspended on Twitter.” The shuttered accounts, which used publicly available data to show the flight paths of private jets, initially displayed a message on Monday that read, “The link you followed may be broken, or the page may have been removed.”

Meta provided no direct warning or explanation for the suspensions, according to Sweeney, who says the accounts appear “blacked out with no options to interact or receive information.” In a statement to TechCrunch, however, an unnamed Meta spokesperson said “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.”

  • Nougat@fedia.io
    389·
    2 months ago

    The irony of Meta/Facebook - infamous for tracking people online - being upset about jet tracking.

    • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1531·
      2 months ago

      Rules and laws are only for the peasantry. Your level of freedom is proportional to your wealth, so Meta has a whole lotta Freedom™️

    • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      641·
      2 months ago

      It’s not even tracking… Tracking is what the FAA does, and makes publicly available. These accounts are just publishing the already-public information.

      Fuck every one of these shitty billionaires. Fly commercial if you don’t want to be tracked publicly.

      • unalivejoy@lemm.eeEnglish
        121·
        2 months ago

        Obviously the way around this is to make an account that responds to any message containing a plane ID, and another that retweets it.

    • ContrarianTrail@lemm.eeEnglish
      1138·
      2 months ago

      Tracking those jets isn’t the issue. It’s sharing that information publicly. Facebook doesn’t hand out your personal information to others, and if you think they do, then you don’t understand how targeted ads work.

        • ContrarianTrail@lemm.eeEnglish
          393·
          2 months ago

          My name, address and phone number are public too but if you were to share it on social media you’d be breaking the law.

          • TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org
            73·
            2 months ago

            https://flightradar24.com

            All I need is your flight number. You don’t know how any of this works, do you?

            You don’t even need the Internet, just search up ADS-B receivers on Amazon. The plane and the ATC system itself is tattling on you every second, blasting your position out over the air.

          • GoodEye8@lemm.eeEnglish
            15·
            2 months ago

            If you put your name, address and phone number on a public forum and someone shares that do you think that’s breaking the law? Doxxing generally applies to making personal identifiable information public without that persons consent. Those celebrities are making their own data public, or rather their private jets are because they’re required to publicly broadcast their location in real time.

            If those accounts are collecting public information they’re not doing anything illegal. Otherwise we might as well call libraries illegal because they contain a registry of every book author whose book is in the library.

          • uzay@infosec.pubEnglish
            4·
            2 months ago

            If they are public, no it is not illegal. If they are not public, but I have them because I provide a service to you, then yes it is illegal (most likely). In this case it is public information, and not even personal information. It is a plane identifier and that plane’s location. The only reason that tells you anything about it’s passenger is because said passenger is rich and entitled enough to own their own plane and use it for themself. It’s like buying the Empire State Building to live there by yourself and then complaining about someone tweeting out your address.

      • cygnus@lemmy.caEnglish
        782·
        2 months ago

        Facebook doesn’t hand out your personal information to others

        Huh? How do you think ad targeting works?

        • ReginaPhalange@lemmy.worldEnglish
          919·
          2 months ago

          “Show my ad to hornly lonely 13 y/o that suffer from Tourette”
          vs
          “Here is a list of 13 y/o that suffer from Tourette”

          One of these options is less profitable for an ad network in the long run.

            • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.worldEnglish
              6·
              2 months ago

              It’s funny how people who get their news exclusively from their Facebook feeds have never heard of Cambridge Analytica. I can’t imagine how that could happen.

              • vxx@lemmy.worldEnglish
                1·
                2 months ago

                It has been over 6 years. I guess a lot of users has been too young to care.

        • ContrarianTrail@lemm.eeEnglish
          532·
          2 months ago

          An advertiser contacts Facebook and says, ‘We’d like to advertise this product to a specific group of people,’ and Facebook says, ‘Sure, hand us your money and the ad you’d like us to display,’ and then targets that ad to the desired audience. At no point does Facebook hand over user data to the advertiser.

          For example, if I want to advertise my home renovation services to all the elderly home owners in my city, then what use would it be for me if they just handed me a list of those people? None. They’re the advertising platform. It’s them who targets those ads.

          • cygnus@lemmy.caEnglish
            401·
            2 months ago

            Except you can add a tracking pixel to the destination website after people click through on the ad, which correlates to people’s individual profile. To say that isn’t “handing out personal information to others” is sophistry of the highest order.

            • ContrarianTrail@lemm.eeEnglish
              235·
              2 months ago

              They’re not handing out personal information. If you hide stuff like that in your ad links then you’re the malicious actor, not facebook.

              • cygnus@lemmy.caEnglish
                301·
                2 months ago

                You may want to familiarize yourself with how their tracking pixel works. In brief, you add a line of code (provided by Facebook) to any given website and on page load that code displays a 1x1px transparent image from Facebook’s servers that allows them to establish a correlation between the loading of that website and the identity of the person logged in to Facebook on that browser. it isn’t “hiding” anything or circumventing Facebook in any way. It’s a core part of their advertising offerings. https://www.facebook.com/business/goals/retargeting

      • Arkouda@lemmy.caEnglish
        541·
        2 months ago

        Facebook doesn’t hand out your personal information to others, and if you think they do, then you don’t understand how targeted ads work.

        It is explicitly stated in the TOS that Meta does indeed hand out your personal information to others.

        If you think they don’t, read the TOS.

      • Lennny@lemmy.worldEnglish
        17·
        2 months ago

        Meta absolutely sells your data. Check out Meta Pixel. A suite you can ad to your website to send and receive said data. Also EU fined them 1.2B for selling data of EU citizens.

      • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
        416·
        2 months ago

        You are right the stupid peasants just too stupid to understand big brain things like privacy 🤡

  • cmrn@lemmy.worldEnglish
    109·
    2 months ago

    This all feels very Streisand Effect. I don’t care about these accounts, but the more attempts there are to suppress them… the more they feel important.

    • supersquirrelEnglish
      43·
      2 months ago

      Seriously threads and bluesky are false promises, the rest of the fediverse might grow and innovate slowly but it is genuine growth on genuinely community owned platforms.

      Bluesky and threads are visions of the past wearing the future’s clothes. They are investor backed and fundamentally and irrevocably for profit ventures.

      Do not be seduced into wasting your time in stuck in the past, this is a perfect reminder we already know where it will end no matter what their precariously employed devs say.

    • theangryseal@lemmy.worldEnglish
      34·
      2 months ago

      I remember when you didn’t have to type carefully in the comments.

      I had my comments removed over and over again on a video about Kurt Cobain recently. I had to type something like, “When he decided to take a vacation away from the planet earth with a traditional 20th century raygun that fired ammunition meant for birds rather than rays or lasers meant for people and space aliens.”

      Meanwhile, “the Jews control all information and have space lasers and and and they put chemicals in the water that turn the frogs gay” and the like doesn’t get removed.

      What a world.

      • Queen HawlSera@lemm.eeEnglish
        13·
        2 months ago

        We live in an era where the truth is the most offensive thing you can say… Or anything funny… or… really anything outside of being overly moronic or hateful

  • Gammelfisch@lemmy.worldEnglish
    591·
    2 months ago

    Mango Mussolini’s flights are paid for by the tax payers through the USAF and those flights should be tracked.

  • Chozo@fedia.io
    54·
    2 months ago

    @elonjet@mastodon.social is still functional, for those who want to follow from the Fediverse.

    • Dsklnsadog@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      5·
      2 months ago

      Thank you. I plan to follow all this jet accounts and expect a Barbra streisand effect. Do you know more in the fediverse?

    • MSids@lemmy.worldEnglish
      19·
      2 months ago

      It’s public information transmitted over airwaves and several sites exist already. Flightradar24 and adsbexchange are the two I use, though Elon and Taylor Swift are far too boring to pay attention to when you can watch refuelers and jets instead.

  • mbirth@lemmy.mlEnglish
    411·
    2 months ago

    But when you report obvious fake accounts that merely exist for 5 days, follow 5000 people already and only have 3 followers themselves but a nice spammy link in their profile, they allegedly don’t violate any terms of services…

    • borth@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      7·
      2 months ago

      The harm to people flying in private jets is much more important than spam links. According to their own “Oversight Board”.

      • zbyte64@awful.systemsEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        Not sure who needs to hear this but the amount of money spent on private jets by these billionaires in 1 year could replace all our lead pipes in the USA.

  • SkyNTP@lemmy.mlEnglish
    32·
    2 months ago

    Corporate censorship. These companies are too powerful and tyrannical.

    • john117@mastodon.jmsquared.net
      121·
      2 months ago

      @bungalowtill @ForgottenFlux

      we have to take the steps to not use their platform, or better yet, start a Fediverse server of their own.

      I was able to do it myself! the cost of running a Lemmy and Mastodon instance for myself is so cheap… I’m actually shocked more people aren’t doing it!

      • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        I was able to do it myself! the cost of running a Lemmy and Mastodon instance for myself is so cheap… I’m actually shocked more people aren’t doing it!

        I mean what for? It costs even less to use an existing Lemmy or Mastodon server given the minimal load you add.

        • john117@mastodon.jmsquared.net
          1·
          2 months ago

          @Carighan cause I don’t have to play by someone elses rules if they decide to change them when they want.

          the Reddit API situation opened my eyes. I pay less than 20 bucks a month and host my family and friends, worth it 🙂

  • Black History Month@lemmy.worldEnglish
    30·
    2 months ago

    Zuck creating a safe-space for billionaire private jet owners on Meta isn’t something I ever thought I would read, but here we are.