ElonJet, the social media account that tracks Elon Musk’s plane, has been forbidden once again.

But this time it’s not Elon Musk and X, formerly Twitter. The account has been banned there since December 2022. (The platform allows an alternative version of ElonJet that publishes Musk’s plane trips on a website. 24 hour turnaround.)

This time ElonJet was banned by Mark Zuckerberg and Meta. And it’s not alone. This week, Facebook, Instagram and Threads accounts that followed the private jet trips of Zuckerberg, Musk, Donald Trump, Kim Kardashian, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Kylie Jenner, Ron DeSantis, among other celebrities, were also banned this week .

Meta bans celebrity plane trackers

It appears that starting this week, real-time celebrity plane trackers are no longer allowed on Meta’s platforms.

“Given the risk of physical harm to individuals, and in accordance with the recommendation of the Independent Oversight Board, we have disabled these accounts for violating our privacy policy,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement.

The ban on the previously mentioned profiles was first confirmed by the owner of these accounts, student Jack Sweeney. Sweeney also ran the ElonJet account on Twitter before Musk banned him.

In a statement, Sweeney common that Meta hadn’t contacted him before suspending all of his jet tracking accounts.

“Today feels like December 15, 2022,” Sweeney saidreferring to the day Twitter retroactively changed its policies and, controversially, deleted Sweeney’s account.

At the time, Musk’s company suspended a number of journalists who shared ElonJet’s Instagram account on Twitter, including the author of this post.

After Twitter’s policy change, Sweeney moved many of his celebrity plane following accounts to Meta-owned platforms.

“It’s crazy how tracking public information can be so controversial, my flight tracking accounts on Instagram and Threads hadn’t broken the rules in years,” Sweeney said. common on the discussions. “The only account that was suspended before yesterday was Taylor Swifts (sic) plane tracking account, when the Swifts (sic) team asked Meta to delete the account last December/January.”

Sweeney uses ADS-B flight tracking data, which is publicly available information required by the FAA, to track these celebrity planes. Many flight tracking websites provide this information to the public. Although Meta cited privacy concerns as the reason behind the bans, the plane tracking data does not show who is on the plane or provide information on where they are traveling before or after the flights.