Taylor Swift’s attorneys have threatened legal action against a Florida college student who runs social media accounts tracking the flights of her and other celebrities’ private jets.
Jack Sweeney, a junior at the University of Central Florida, has for years run accounts that log the takeoffs and landings of planes and helicopters owned by hundreds of billionaires, politicians, Russian oligarchs and other public figures, along with estimates of their planet-warming emissions. The accounts use publicly available data from the Federal Aviation Administration and volunteer hobbyists who can track the aircraft via the signals they broadcast.
Sweeney’s accounts fueled a free-speech debate in late 2022 when X, formerly Twitter, banned Sweeney for sharing what the platform’s owner, Elon Musk, said were his “assassination coordinates.” The accounts don’t say who travels on the aircraft or where they go once the planes land.
In December, Swift’s attorney at the Washington law firm Venable wrote Sweeney a cease-and-desist letter saying Swift would “have no choice but to pursue any and all legal remedies” if he did not stop his “stalking and harassing behavior.”
The earth is not dying, it is being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses
Under the People's Regime, patriots like this fellow will be part of a billionaire surveillance bureau.
Absolutely, they'll need to be identified, hunted down, and stripped of all assets and power.
I'm beginning to think that there's a substantial overlap between being rich and being an asshole.
It’s super fascinating how she’s becoming more of an asshole as her power and influence grows
Best argument for absolute power corrupts absolutely that I’ve heard in sometime
I imagine that he's trying to make the statement that travel bad? Eh. I feel like global warming is more due to deregulation, and emissions and pollution from massive corporations, not due to a small handful of celebs jetting everywhere.
I feel like global warming is more due to deregulation, and emissions and pollution from massive corporations, not due to a small handful of celebs jetting everywhere.
I mean yes, sure, the 100 largest corporations plus the US military (
) are responsible for the VAST majority of emissions, but it's still also true that billionaires' private jets emit hundreds to thousands of times more GHG than even the average USAian does across their whole life, and for no particularly good reason. Some of the worst offenders will take flights that are 10-20 minutes long just to avoid sitting in traffic for a few minutes, emitting hundreds of pounds of CO2 in the process. It's absolutely something that should be tracked and subjected to social pressure. Billionaires who like to present themselves as climate conscious liberals might actually modify their behavior based on sustained public pressure. Is it going to solve the overall problem? No, of course not. Is it better than not doing anything? Absolutely.The fact that the entire celebrity set each have the emissions of a medium sized town is actually fucked.
Billionaires can have a little private jet, as a treat.
Then we can also track those jets and possibly do something about them in minecraft, as a treat.
