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Jack Sweeney, who gained notoriety for his @ElonJet account on X and maintained many of the suspended accounts, said on Threads that the development is “reminiscent of all my accounts getting suspended on Twitter.” The shuttered accounts, which used publicly available data to show the flight paths of private jets, initially displayed a message on Monday that read, “The link you followed may be broken, or the page may have been removed.”

Meta provided no direct warning or explanation for the suspensions, according to Sweeney, who says the accounts appear “blacked out with no options to interact or receive information.” In a statement to TechCrunch, however, an unnamed Meta spokesperson said “Given the risk of physical harm to individuals, and in keeping with the independent Oversight Board’s recommendation, we’ve disabled these accounts for violating our privacy policy.”

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[-] Nougat@fedia.io 379 points 2 months ago

The irony of Meta/Facebook - infamous for tracking people online - being upset about jet tracking.

[-] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 147 points 2 months ago

Rules and laws are only for the peasantry. Your level of freedom is proportional to your wealth, so Meta has a whole lotta Freedom™️

[-] Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works 62 points 2 months ago

It's not even tracking... Tracking is what the FAA does, and makes publicly available. These accounts are just publishing the already-public information.

Fuck every one of these shitty billionaires. Fly commercial if you don't want to be tracked publicly.

[-] joyjoy@lemm.ee 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Obviously the way around this is to make an account that responds to any message containing a plane ID, and another that retweets it.

[-] ContrarianTrail@lemm.ee 1 points 2 months ago

Tracking those jets isn’t the issue. It’s sharing that information publicly. Facebook doesn’t hand out your personal information to others, and if you think they do, then you don’t understand how targeted ads work.

[-] Nougat@fedia.io 122 points 2 months ago

That information is already public, how do you think he gets it?

[-] ContrarianTrail@lemm.ee 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

My name, address and phone number are public too but if you were to share it on social media you'd be breaking the law.

[-] TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org 70 points 2 months ago

https://flightradar24.com

All I need is your flight number. You don't know how any of this works, do you?

You don't even need the Internet, just search up ADS-B receivers on Amazon. The plane and the ATC system itself is tattling on you every second, blasting your position out over the air.

[-] Nougat@fedia.io 25 points 2 months ago
[-] ContrarianTrail@lemm.ee 1 points 2 months ago

I believe it's prohibited under GDPR as well as many local laws.

[-] Nougat@fedia.io 31 points 2 months ago
[-] ContrarianTrail@lemm.ee 1 points 2 months ago

Do you think there shouldn't be any laws prohibiting the sharing of people's personal information like that?

[-] Nougat@fedia.io 29 points 2 months ago

No, I don't think phone books should be illegal.

[-] BassTurd@lemmy.world 29 points 2 months ago

Not when it comes to air traffic.

[-] Prandom_returns@lemm.ee 25 points 2 months ago

The websites track the planes not the individuals.

The planes might be flying empty. It has nothing to do with GDPR.

[-] XaiwahBlue 10 points 2 months ago

Is that question really "in good-faith" to "that law doesn't apply in my country"?

[-] GoodEye8@lemm.ee 15 points 2 months ago

If you put your name, address and phone number on a public forum and someone shares that do you think that's breaking the law? Doxxing generally applies to making personal identifiable information public without that persons consent. Those celebrities are making their own data public, or rather their private jets are because they're required to publicly broadcast their location in real time.

If those accounts are collecting public information they're not doing anything illegal. Otherwise we might as well call libraries illegal because they contain a registry of every book author whose book is in the library.

[-] uzay@infosec.pub 4 points 2 months ago

If they are public, no it is not illegal. If they are not public, but I have them because I provide a service to you, then yes it is illegal (most likely). In this case it is public information, and not even personal information. It is a plane identifier and that plane's location. The only reason that tells you anything about it's passenger is because said passenger is rich and entitled enough to own their own plane and use it for themself. It's like buying the Empire State Building to live there by yourself and then complaining about someone tweeting out your address.

[-] TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com 2 points 2 months ago

What does that have to do with airplanes ?

[-] cygnus@lemmy.ca 77 points 2 months ago

Facebook doesn’t hand out your personal information to others

Huh? How do you think ad targeting works?

[-] ReginaPhalange@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago

"Show my ad to hornly lonely 13 y/o that suffer from Tourette"
vs
"Here is a list of 13 y/o that suffer from Tourette"

One of these options is less profitable for an ad network in the long run.

[-] vxx@lemmy.world 39 points 2 months ago

Did you all forget about Cambridge Analytica?

[-] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago

It's funny how people who get their news exclusively from their Facebook feeds have never heard of Cambridge Analytica. I can't imagine how that could happen.

[-] vxx@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

It has been over 6 years. I guess a lot of users has been too young to care.

[-] ContrarianTrail@lemm.ee 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

An advertiser contacts Facebook and says, 'We’d like to advertise this product to a specific group of people,' and Facebook says, 'Sure, hand us your money and the ad you'd like us to display,' and then targets that ad to the desired audience. At no point does Facebook hand over user data to the advertiser.

For example, if I want to advertise my home renovation services to all the elderly home owners in my city, then what use would it be for me if they just handed me a list of those people? None. They're the advertising platform. It's them who targets those ads.

[-] cygnus@lemmy.ca 37 points 2 months ago

Except you can add a tracking pixel to the destination website after people click through on the ad, which correlates to people's individual profile. To say that isn't "handing out personal information to others" is sophistry of the highest order.

[-] ContrarianTrail@lemm.ee 2 points 2 months ago

They're not handing out personal information. If you hide stuff like that in your ad links then you're the malicious actor, not facebook.

[-] cygnus@lemmy.ca 28 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

You may want to familiarize yourself with how their tracking pixel works. In brief, you add a line of code (provided by Facebook) to any given website and on page load that code displays a 1x1px transparent image from Facebook's servers that allows them to establish a correlation between the loading of that website and the identity of the person logged in to Facebook on that browser. it isn't "hiding" anything or circumventing Facebook in any way. It's a core part of their advertising offerings. https://www.facebook.com/business/goals/retargeting

[-] Arkouda@lemmy.ca 52 points 2 months ago

Facebook doesn’t hand out your personal information to others, and if you think they do, then you don’t understand how targeted ads work.

It is explicitly stated in the TOS that Meta does indeed hand out your personal information to others.

If you think they don't, read the TOS.

[-] Lennny@lemmy.world 17 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Meta absolutely sells your data. Check out Meta Pixel. A suite you can ad to your website to send and receive said data. Also EU fined them 1.2B for selling data of EU citizens.

this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2024
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