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The billionaires who control social media want to be clear about what can and cannot be posted online.
On X (formerly Twitter), almost anything is allowed, including neo-Nazi propaganda, cryptocurrency scams, and pornography (as long as it’s labeled appropriately).
For Facebook and Instagram, the rules are a bit more restrictive, although it’s still easy to find misinformation about the election (“eat dog”), fake news about hurricane relief funds, fictional celebrity feuds, or AI-generated images purporting to show, for example that Hurricane Milton destroyed Disney World (it didn’t).
But there’s one thing no company will tolerate: public tracking of their owners’ private jet trips.
Watch it here: On Monday, Meta suspended several Instagram and Threads accounts dedicated to tracking – using publicly available data – the itineraries of various celebrities’ private jets, including one used by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Other accounts, all run by Florida college student Jack Sweeney, followed Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Taylor Swift, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner.
“Given the risk of physical harm to individuals and at the recommendation of our independent Oversight Board, we have disabled these accounts for violating our privacy policy,” a Meta spokesperson told CNN in an email.
The suspension of Sweeney’s Instagram and Threads accounts comes two years after Elon Musk bought Twitter and temporarily launched Sweeney’s “ElonJet” channel, which was later reinstated with a 24-hour delay to comply with the site’s privacy policy.
“Today brings a sense of deja vu,” Sweeney wrote Tuesday on Bluesky, the platform closest to Musk’s pre-launch Twitter. “These platforms operate without transparency and appear to make arbitrary decisions.”
Sweeney, who says he has had 38 social media accounts suspended, added that he has “received no communication from Meta – no warnings, no explanations.”
Public figures who don’t like to attract attention to Sweeney’s songs. Earlier this year, Taylor Swift’s lawyers sent Sweeney a cease-and-desist letter, accusing him of “stalking and harassment.”
Which of course – we can all agree that Swift is a treasure and we don’t want any harm to come to her. Or anyone else! But it’s not like Sweeney somehow secretly bugged her plane and then revealed her every move.
US authorities maintain a public database of all private plane owners in America, tracked by aircraft tail number, and Sweeney’s algorithm relies on this data. Anyone can do the same – Sweeney just made it a little more convenient.
It’s simply not clear that Meta cares about the privacy and well-being of its users as much as it does Zuckerberg.
The company has significantly stepped up efforts to stop false and dangerous content, although it has not addressed the very real problem of misinformation on its platforms.
For example, Instagram recently introduced “teen account” settings that default to “private” and restrict young people’s access to the type of content. The move has come almost three years after a whistleblower released hundreds of internal documents suggesting that Meta was aware of the harmful effects of its products and yet took no action to address them.
As my colleague Clare Duffy recently wrote, court documents from recent lawsuits against Meta show that Zuckerberg repeatedly thwarted teen wellness initiatives, that Meta knowingly refused to close accounts belonging to children under 13, and that the company allowed children predators. During a January Senate hearing, Zuckerberg apologized to families who said their children had been harmed by social media.
You think this is bad – imagine if Zuck’s security had to additionally search the place he just flew his plane to. literal private jet.
The irony of Meta suspending Sweeney’s accounts is that the move recognizes the incredible power (and risk) of aggregating and amplifying data in a compelling way.
The meta basically says: Sure, anyone could find Zuck’s jet using public data, but you have to understand that when an algorithm automatically enters your field of view, it could inspire someone to do something bad…
Oh! You mean the way anyone on the internet can, for example, spread a false rumor about people eating pets, but when Facebook’s algorithm automatically encourages you to engage with that rumor, that’s the kind of thing that can… get out of control?
Oh my. I think we all learned an important lesson this week about disseminating confidential information responsibly.