The US company Meta has, without notice, blocked numerous accounts on Instagram and threads that publicized the flights of private aircraft belonging to celebrities. The college student responsible for this, Jack Sweeney, did made public and brings together that, among other things, accounts for the jets of various celebrities (CelebJets), Kim Kardashian, Kylie Jenner and Jeff Bezos are affected, but also the one for Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg’s private flights.
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An account that publicizes Donald Trump’s private flights was initially not affected, but is now also blocked. The Instagram accounts and, if available, those on threads were blocked. In all cases, existing Facebook accounts can still be accessed.
Student vs. Meta
The procedure is not new for Sweeney, but so far his problems have always come from the affected celebrities themselves. The student operates a whole range of accounts on the short message services X, Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads and Nostr, but also on Instagram and Facebook. Based on publicly available data, they send out notifications when private jets of certain celebrities take off. At the end of 2022, this brought him into conflict with Elon Musk, who had an account there temporarily blocked after the Twitter takeover. At the end of 2023, Taylor Swift also tried to have accounts for her own private flights shut down and had already been blocked on Instagram and Facebook. The basis was the data protection rules of the platforms.
What exactly is behind the current approach is unclear. According to Sweeney, he was given no justification for this. A total of 38 of his accounts have now been blocked, and once again these are “arbitrary decisions” without transparency, he criticizes. The student reminds us that the account for Swift’s private flights was blocked on Instagram months ago, but the others continued to function. This is a clear example of unequal treatment that has persisted for a long time. What is particularly problematic is that he cannot even complain about the bans to Meta’s Oversight Board. It is also annoying that he has recently expanded his presence on threads. He doesn’t know what happened now.
Musk and Swift had criticized the accounts because they posed a danger to them. They are based on publicly visible data and simply make them more accessible. In addition, the flights are summarized; there is no information about the whereabouts of the celebrities.
Because the accounts also list how much CO₂ was emitted per flight based on the flight data, they served at least once as the basis for an analysis of the biggest environmental offenders among celebrities. Taylor Swift topped the 2022 list. Even later, there was repeated criticism of her aircraft’s trips and the associated emissions. Sweeney sees the operation of the accounts as an act of transparency.
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