(Bloomberg) — Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. removed several accounts on Threads and Instagram that were used to track celebrity private jets, including the plane owned by its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, citing risk of “physical harm”. »

The accounts, which rely on publicly available information to track, among other details, a plane’s location and CO2 emissions, were banned without warning this week after Meta updated its privacy policy . The newly banned accounts include those that follow the planes of celebrities, including Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner, and business leaders, including Zuckerberg, former Amazon.com Inc. CEO Jeff Bezos and Tesla Inc. CEO. and owner of X, Elon Musk.

Meta pointed to a recommendation from its oversight board, an outside group tasked with reviewing company rules and controversial positions, to justify the change. That recommendation, from early 2022, advised Meta to remove “private residential information” from its site, even if that information was publicly available.

“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 company spokesperson said in a statement .

Most of the affected accounts were run by Jack Sweeney, a Florida college student who gained notoriety tracking celebrity planes. In a letter posted to his Threads account, Sweeney said he “received no communication from Meta” regarding the bans before they were initiated. “These platforms operate without transparency and we have the impression that they make arbitrary decisions,” he wrote.

This isn’t Sweeney’s first encounter with a tech company or billionaire who wanted his accounts deleted. Musk has long disputed the account of Sweeney following his private plane, once calling the information “assassination coordinates.” Shortly after purchasing Sweeney still tracks Musk’s plane on X, but posts the plane’s location with a 24-hour delay.

Earlier this year, lawyers for pop star Taylor Swift asked Sweeney to stop following her private plane. Around the same time, Meta deleted Sweeney’s accounts that followed Swift’s plane, but left her other accounts intact.

Sweeney says he has been banned from 38 different accounts on Meta and X, the site formerly known as Twitter.

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