Rather than fly commercial, the billionaire threatened a college kid with legal action for sharing publicly available information about her private flights.
Celebrities don’t like Jack Sweeney. For the past few years, the University of Central Florida junior has run several social media accounts that track planes and helicopters owned by billionaires, oligarchs, and other members of the ruling class using publicly available flight records from the Federal Aviation Administration.
It bothered Elon Musk so much that he specifically changed X/Twitter’s policies to ban Sweeney’s account. Now, Taylor Swift is taking the baton from Musk. The pop star is threatening to sue Sweeney if he doesn’t stop posting about where she goes in her personal planes. Swift’s legal team sent Sweeney a cease-and-desist letter, warning that the singer will “have no choice but to pursue any and all legal remedies” if he doesn’t quit his “stalking and harassing behavior,” according to the Washington Post. His social media accounts—which, again, post information that is already available to the public—caused Swift and her family “direct and irreparable harm, as well as emotional and physical distress,” and left her in a “constant state of fear for her personal safety.” Swift’s team confirmed to Gizmodo that the threat is real but declined to comment. Sweeney told Gizmodo he has no intention of harming the singer. “I actually think Swift has some good songs,” he said, but “I believe in transparency and public information.” The college student points out that for all Swift’s apparent concern about privacy, she’s unusually public about her planes. “She inherently could fly commercial or even fly a charter jet. But instead, she chooses to fly private jets which are registered in her birthday, and initials,” Sweeney said. For example, a Falcon 900 reportedly owned by Swift is registered as N898TS, apparently referencing her first and last name and her famous 1989 birth year. Though the registration for that plane changed in recent days, analysis by Swift’s rabid fans suggests the jet is still hers. Safety isn’t the only reason Swift might want to keep her joyrides private. For years, Taylor’s been called out for her astronomical carbon footprint as one of the world’s leading users of private planes. Her jetsetting relationship with Kansas City Chiefs player Travis Kelce, for example, has the pop star flying back and forth between New York, the Midwest, and her international tour dates. Jalopnik reports that Swift took 12 trips to see her football-playing beau in the last three months of 2023 alone. An independent analysis found that Swift was the “biggest celebrity CO2e polluter of the year” in 2022, and her effect on the environment is one of the most damning criticisms of the pop star’s career. But Taylor “Carbon Queen” Swift maintains that flight tracking is a “a life-or-death matter” and that there is “no legitimate interest in or public need for this information, other than to stalk, harass, and exert dominion and control.” In her defense, she does contend with stalkers as one of the world’s most famous people. An alleged stalker was arrested three times in a single week in January, under accusations of disorderly conduct near Swift’s Manhattan townhouse. Then again, turning off Sweeney’s social media accounts wouldn’t do much to throw off a determined stalker when the flight records are a matter of public record. “Swift’s team also suggests that I have no legitimate interest in sharing the jet information,” Sweeney said, but the fans who’ve grown the popularity of the TaylorSwiftJets accounts and corresponding subreddit show that isn’t true. “I think the people are interested, and that you should have a decent expectation that your jet will be tracked, whether or not I do it, as after all, it is public information.” Swift isn’t the only thorn in Sweeney’s flight-tracking side. Shortly after buying Twitter, Elon Musk changed the platform’s doxing policies and then went on a tirade about @ElonJet, an account Sweeney ran that tracked the billionaire’s flights. Though Musk previously used his tolerance of @ElonJet as an example of his chivalrous dedication to free speech, the CEO later banned @ElonJet from Twitter, and then proceeded to ban several journalists merely for discussing the account. Musk later welcomed the journalists and @ElonJet back to the platform without explanation, and subsequently banned @ElonJet once again. The flight-tracking information is still available through accounts on Threads and BlueSky.
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