A college student who tracks Elon Musk's and Mark Zuckerberg's private jets says his Threads accounts have been suspended

• Jack Sweeney said his Threads accounts search backstage jets' formation paths were suspended.
• Meta cited privacy-policy violations and nan imaginable for beingness harm arsenic reasons.
• Sweeney's pitchy search has faced backlash, including ineligible threats from Elon Musk and Taylor Swift.

Jack Sweeney, a assemblage student who tracks nan backstage jets of respective high-profile people, including Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, says his Threads accounts person been suspended.

In a statement posted connected his individual account connected Tuesday, Sweeney said each his jet-tracking accounts connected nan Meta-run level had been suspended. He said he received nary warnings aliases communications from nan Big Tech institution earlier nan accounts were suspended.

Sweeney's accounts search nan formation paths of jets belonging to Zuckerberg, Kim Kardashian, and Donald Trump were among those affected.

When asked astir nan suspended accounts, a Meta spokesperson told Business Insider: "Given nan consequence of beingness harm to individuals, and successful keeping pinch nan independent Oversight Board's recommendation, we've abnormal these accounts for violating our privateness policy."

Sweeney did not instantly respond to a petition for remark from Business Insider sent extracurricular of normal moving hours.

Over nan past fewer years Sweeney has tracked and shared nan formation information of immoderate of nan world's astir powerful people. The information shared connected nan accounts is publically disposable done nan US Federal Aviation Administration.

Sweeney started by sharing information from nan ADS-B Exchange connected Twitter, now X, utilizing automated bots. He expanded to Instagram and Threads and launched his ain database for monitoring aircraft.

The accounts person caused contention and upset immoderate powerful people, including Musk and Taylor Swift. Both person threatened Sweeney pinch lawsuits, pinch Swift saying nan accounts constituted "stalking and harassing behavior."

Sweeney first made headlines successful 2022 aft Musk offered him money to extremity publically sharing his formation information. At nan time, Sweeney was a freshman astatine nan University of Central Florida successful Orlando, studying accusation technology.

He antecedently told BI he tried negotiating a higher value but ne'er heard backmost from Musk.

In December 2022, Twitter suspended Sweeney's jet-tracking accounts. Musk, who had taken complete nan social-media institution months earlier, called nan accounts a "physical information violation."

Since then, nan institution has updated its policies to restrict users from sharing different people's unrecorded locations.