Technology
Facebook user blocked for tracking private jets of Musk, Zuckerberg
The American guy Jack Sweeney, tracked the trajectory of Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s private jets. Sweeney claims that Facebook banned his tracking account.
Sweeney shared on Twitter a screenshot of a notice Facebook sent him, saying that Sweeney’s page tracking Musk’s private jet was not shown because it violated Facebook page policies. A Facebook spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Sweeney said Facebook’s email did not reveal more details, including why his account was banned, a move that caused the bot he used to track Musk’s private jet to crash on other sites. “I filed an appeal and never heard back,” Sweeney said.
Sweeney, a student at the University of Central Florida, whose pages tracked the private jets of celebrities such as Musk and Zuckerberg have also been restricted in the past. Facebook pages may be removed for posting misleading content, promoting hate speech, or violating the site’s community standards, including “content that may compromise personal safety.”
Sweeney has previously argued that he does not believe the accounts pose a significant security threat because the data is already available through public air traffic tracking sites such as ADS-B Exchange. He also said he simply tweeted the data through bots scraping the site.
On Facebook, Sweeney does not have any other private jet tracking accounts. But Instagram, also owned by Facebook’s parent company Meta, did not delete the duplicate @elonmusksjet account. By comparison, the Instagram page has only about 11,000 followers, while the @ElonJet account on Twitter has nearly half a million followers.
Moreover, Sweeney first created the @ElonJet account in June 2020 and made headlines in January after Musk offered to pay him $5,000 to shut down the Twitter account that tracked his travels. The billionaire told Sweeney he feared for his safety and didn’t like the idea of being shot by a lunatic. Sweeney rejected Musk’s offer and asked for $50,000, which Musk turned down.
Musk isn’t the only one Sweeney has tracked. In May, the college student said he spotted Zuckerberg’s new private jet. Previously, the Facebook founder appeared to switch planes shortly after Sweeney first tweeted about his whereabouts.
While Sweeney initially rejected Musk’s offer, he said he wasn’t opposed to removing the tracking account at the right price. Earlier this year, he said he stopped following the plane of billionaire investor Mark Cuban on Twitter in exchange for offering him business advice.