Attorneys for Taylor Swift are threatening legal action against the Florida college student who tracks the private jets of celebrities and public figures, including Swift.
She’s generally good at managing her public persona, except when it comes to her pollute more than a small city machine private jet addiction. When people show you who they really are, believe them.
She also showed who she really was during the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes: someone who agrees to union demands, which was why she was allowed to release the best-selling concert movie of all time during the middle of the strikes.
On top of that, she got thousands of her fans registered to vote.
Not to take away from one of the most powerful people on the planet*, but a decent number of companies did that. I want to say A24 almost immediately agreed and that is why they were able to keep making films during the strike.
*: Jesus christ. How did Taylor Swift become one of the most powerful people on the planet?
Very much agree with this sentiment. I feel, too often, this gets lost in discussions. People will do stuff we agree with, and then they’ll turn around and do something we disagree with. It’s fine to praise and simultaneously lambast 'em.
It’s pretty healthy, IMO. Seeing the fuzzy set of actions that people take that you agree with and don’t agree with as part of a whole person is a sign of maturity mentally.
Yeah, I imagine she had someone crunch the numbers and figure out that it’s worth it to agree to the union’s demands to get a premiere in the middle of the strike AND the good PR. Sounds like a pretty safe bet.
Now mind you, I don’t really know anything about the situation beyond what I read in your comment. I don’t know what movie that was and I’m only somewhat aware there was a big strike in the entertainment industry in the USA. Just little pieces I caught here on Lemmy and maybe back on reddit too. I’m not claiming to have any particular insight into her motivations or anything, just that what you presented as her good side sounds very much like business acumen to me rather than philantropy.
She has a very good PR manager to keep her in such a good image. You know there are hundreds of people rooting for her downfall and are waiting for every slip up.
Anything Taylor goes straight to front-page, despite my efforts to block it.
Admittedly I don’t know much about her as a person, but how can someone who uses a private jet in 2024 be considered a decent person by any stretch?
Having such a ludicrously unsustainable lifestyle in a climate emergency that will kill millions and displace hundreds of millions in just a few decades is a crime against humanity, change my mind.
The same way a pediatric heart surgeon who also drives a Land Rover can be considered a decent person. People shouldn’t be judged on a single data point.
A land rover isn’t nearly as polluting and doesn’t drive nearly as far. More importantly, the heart surgeon isn’t a role model in terms of lifestyle aspirations for literally hundreds of millions of followers.
People shouldn’t be judged on a single data point.
It’s not like we’re talking about stealing some sweets from children or something. Climate change just gets worse and worse and worse until we reach net zero co2 emissions. As long as it’s culturally accepted to cause massive amounts of completely unnecessary emissions, we don’t have the slightest chance of fixing this.
The only way a decent person could be doing this is if they were completely uneducated about climate change and their impact as a role model.
Neither the doctor nor Taylor Swift would make the tiniest dent in climate change if they gave those things up and we need to stop blaming individuals when it isn’t individuals who are the problem unless those individuals are running one of those 100 companies. Which Taylor Swift is not.
There’s always a supplier and a consumer. The pollution of these 100 corporations is caused on behalf of their customers who fund them in exchange for fossil fuels, directly or indirectly. They are both responsible, it’s 2 sides of the same coin.
Of course, much of this pollution isn’t really avoidable at this point. We can’t have 100% renewable power and electric cars tomorrow. Some really polluting industries will take decades to decarbonize, like steel and cement production. But this makes it even more urgent to adress the low hanging fruit asap, i.e. big sources of pollution that can easily be cut. Private jets are a prime example.
You could say just a few private jet flights or chopping down one single forest won’t make a dent in global carbon emissions, but that doesn’t mean that thousands around the world can keep on doing it indefinitely without consequences for all of us. Especially if they are idols for millions of people, normalizing harm to society that we can’t afford.
Whatever. If people don’t like Taylor Swift it doesn’t bother me. To be honest, I’ve only ever heard one of her songs all the way through. She just has done plenty of good things. This is one of the few things I’ve heard about her that wasn’t her being a decent person.
I have also never knowingly heard her music. It’s not that I avoid her, I just have never listened to pop music in lieu of jazz, classical, or world. But she does seem to be an upstanding person for the most part.
Well, we got some overriding scenario blasting away all nuance.
It’s hard to be sympathetic toward a fundamental privacy limitation associated with flying in a plane exclusively owned by you. So in this context, it’s easy to equate “Leave Taylor alone!” with "it’s sad how she can’t fly in her private jet without being tracked, there’s nothing she can do!’
Now broadly speaking, I get that a lot of unreasonable piling on is coming with it, but the private jet is a symbol of excess and environmental harm and it’s inherently a risk to hop into that whole mess. Particularly when she could charter private flights to the same effect without the tracking (still excess and environmental harm, but at least obfuscated from public eye a bit).
I never said she should be left alone or that it’s sad that she can’t fly without being tracked.
I don’t care if she can be tracked when she flies. I said she was in the wrong here. All I said was that she generally comes across as a decent person.
Traffic cameras are usually publicly accessible. You are also, generally, allowed to take pictures of people when they are in public spaces where there is not an expectation of privacy.
So at what point of this is the line crossed?
Seb in space’s car was spotted driving down Main Street at 4:13 pm on Tuesday
Seb in space was next seen on 1st street at 4:15 pm
…
Seb in space was next seen turning off into the Hairy Palms apartment complex at 9:12 pm on Tuesday
Seb in space was seen leaving the Hairy Palms apartment complex at 06:00 on Wednesday
That is where this gets pretty murky. Because we all more or less acknowledge that parparazzi taking pictures of everyone leaving an airport are assholes (unless it is about figuring out if The Rock is going to come do PR to distract people from the WWE sexual slavery scandal…). But we have no issue with knowing that without even needing to send someone over to see who got off the 1235 LAX->DFW flight.
And while my initial stance is “fuck the super-rich”: I am allegedly part of a private chat for “people in tech” to give each other a heads up if we see a CEO getting off a flight. Because if your boss is pretty regularly visiting Facebook HQ and not telling anyone? That is the sign that you need to refresh your CV because you might get layed off after an acquisition/merger. There are definitely business reasons for not making it trivial to track individuals.
So yeah. I am going to side on the stance of “if you need to travel secretly, wear sunglasses like the rest of us”. Or, if you are too famous to even risk that, at least use one of the private jet companies rather than owning your own. But I also think this is something that we need to actually consider from a legal and privacy standpoint and it is a lot more complex than that.
That’s fair, but that’s a discussion about how accessible the info should be. If it’s public, it’s public, and the public has equal access to it. If it shouldn’t be that easy to access, we fix the system, not punish the users. And suing is punishment/aggression, regardless of the outcome. Self defense isn’t free.
Unfortunately, the way the legal system adapts is through precedent.
“Optimally”? That kid drops it before any legal action is actually followed up on (no harm, no foul). Then they and Swift work with the various lobbyist/activist groups to push this farther on their side.
Or the kid is an idiot and it goes to court and we begin the appeals escalation right then and there.
How do you get that identifier for Taylor Swift’s plane? That part I don’t know and maybe that part is where her case lies, but I have a feeling she has no case or Musk would have tried the same thing.
Anyone can write a trivially simple program to analyze license plates (or even car profiles) and feed it traffic cam footage. I’ve done that for poops and giggles (never pushed since it was sketchy). Have broadband and a few medium sized computers and you can process the entirety of a state’s traffic cameras. At which point, it is trivial to track 455M4N’s '92 buick.
Where can I find live traffic cameras with high enough resolution to read license plates? I’ve only seen traffic cameras with something like 320x240 max.
You know how back in the day, Mythbusters would joke about “adding blah”? Or how a lot of chemistry and engineering youtubers won’t provide the exact specifics once they start working with a gun or something meth adjacent?
Its one of those things where if you have the basic understanding of how these systems work, you can find it pretty trivially (or work around things). And if you don’t? Then you really don’t need to know.
That’s still not the same thing because the FAA is a federal organization and you’re talking about something you can only do in certain municipalities. Traffic camera footage is not available universally and a city may not even use them.
But I also think this is something that we need to actually consider from a legal and privacy standpoint and it is a lot more complex than that.
Just because you can do something or it is even legal to do something doesn’t mean you “should”. That is why it is important to reassess laws and the like from time to time.
I feel like your example is way more granular than what is going on here. It’s more like ‘so and so has arrived at this city airport now’ and within an hour or two they could be anywhere in a fairly large radius without anyone reporting their location. Also there is the fact that this is ‘punching up’ which is often seen as ok.
I don’t pretend to have an answer here, but it’s hard to feel sorry for celebrities.
I am suspicious as to whether that is a “legit” site at all…
But yeah. Even mentioned below. It is REALLY not an insurmountable problem. But apparently people don’t understand why people might not want to give step by step instructions for how to do something that, in my opinion, is fundamentally “bad”. Can’t imagine what would happen if Mythbusters talked about “adding blah” or Burn Notice did the “and other stuff” short hand for “Yo dog, this shit is not something we should explain the details of”
Alright you’ve been on a roll lately Swifty, but imma call you out; transponders are public information.
Yeah, she’s generally a decent person, but she’s just in the wrong here.
She’s generally good at managing her public persona, except when it comes to her
pollute more than a small city machineprivate jet addiction. When people show you who they really are, believe them.She also showed who she really was during the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes: someone who agrees to union demands, which was why she was allowed to release the best-selling concert movie of all time during the middle of the strikes.
On top of that, she got thousands of her fans registered to vote.
People are complicated.
I like that she singlehandedly proved the union demands were reasonable.
Not to take away from one of the most powerful people on the planet*, but a decent number of companies did that. I want to say A24 almost immediately agreed and that is why they were able to keep making films during the strike.
*: Jesus christ. How did Taylor Swift become one of the most powerful people on the planet?
You ever tried saying no to a teenage daughter?
“People are complicated.”
Very much agree with this sentiment. I feel, too often, this gets lost in discussions. People will do stuff we agree with, and then they’ll turn around and do something we disagree with. It’s fine to praise and simultaneously lambast 'em.
It’s pretty healthy, IMO. Seeing the fuzzy set of actions that people take that you agree with and don’t agree with as part of a whole person is a sign of maturity mentally.
Having to cleave people into “the Madonna” and “the whore” or the “good object” and the “bad object” is in the mix for a variety of mental problems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_(psychology)
Also pulled her catalog from Spotify to protest their scummy royalty payouts. They changed the payouts for everyone as a result.
When you put it like that, it doesn’t really sound like she was doing it out of the goodness of her heart.
Because she knew beforehand how it would do?
Yeah, I imagine she had someone crunch the numbers and figure out that it’s worth it to agree to the union’s demands to get a premiere in the middle of the strike AND the good PR. Sounds like a pretty safe bet.
Now mind you, I don’t really know anything about the situation beyond what I read in your comment. I don’t know what movie that was and I’m only somewhat aware there was a big strike in the entertainment industry in the USA. Just little pieces I caught here on Lemmy and maybe back on reddit too. I’m not claiming to have any particular insight into her motivations or anything, just that what you presented as her good side sounds very much like business acumen to me rather than philantropy.
Maybe I’m just a cynic.
I mean, just because she benefited doesn’t mean hundreds of others also didn’t.
Sure, I’m not saying it’s wrong what she did, just that it’s not a good way to judge her character.
She has a very good PR manager to keep her in such a good image. You know there are hundreds of people rooting for her downfall and are waiting for every slip up.
Anything Taylor goes straight to front-page, despite my efforts to block it.
Removed by mod
Admittedly I don’t know much about her as a person, but how can someone who uses a private jet in 2024 be considered a decent person by any stretch?
Having such a ludicrously unsustainable lifestyle in a climate emergency that will kill millions and displace hundreds of millions in just a few decades is a crime against humanity, change my mind.
The same way a pediatric heart surgeon who also drives a Land Rover can be considered a decent person. People shouldn’t be judged on a single data point.
A land rover isn’t nearly as polluting and doesn’t drive nearly as far. More importantly, the heart surgeon isn’t a role model in terms of lifestyle aspirations for literally hundreds of millions of followers.
It’s not like we’re talking about stealing some sweets from children or something. Climate change just gets worse and worse and worse until we reach net zero co2 emissions. As long as it’s culturally accepted to cause massive amounts of completely unnecessary emissions, we don’t have the slightest chance of fixing this.
The only way a decent person could be doing this is if they were completely uneducated about climate change and their impact as a role model.
Do you really think Taylor Swift not having a private plane is going to do anything about climate change when the real problem is major corporations?
When 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions, why is Taylor Swift to be treated as a pariah because she has a private plane?
Neither the doctor nor Taylor Swift would make the tiniest dent in climate change if they gave those things up and we need to stop blaming individuals when it isn’t individuals who are the problem unless those individuals are running one of those 100 companies. Which Taylor Swift is not.
There’s always a supplier and a consumer. The pollution of these 100 corporations is caused on behalf of their customers who fund them in exchange for fossil fuels, directly or indirectly. They are both responsible, it’s 2 sides of the same coin.
Of course, much of this pollution isn’t really avoidable at this point. We can’t have 100% renewable power and electric cars tomorrow. Some really polluting industries will take decades to decarbonize, like steel and cement production. But this makes it even more urgent to adress the low hanging fruit asap, i.e. big sources of pollution that can easily be cut. Private jets are a prime example.
You could say just a few private jet flights or chopping down one single forest won’t make a dent in global carbon emissions, but that doesn’t mean that thousands around the world can keep on doing it indefinitely without consequences for all of us. Especially if they are idols for millions of people, normalizing harm to society that we can’t afford.
LOL 15 downvotes at time of this comment for you daring to say that she was wrong.
I think they’re downvoting me for saying she’s a generally decent person considering some of the replies I’ve gotten.
There is definitely some brigading going on.
Whatever. If people don’t like Taylor Swift it doesn’t bother me. To be honest, I’ve only ever heard one of her songs all the way through. She just has done plenty of good things. This is one of the few things I’ve heard about her that wasn’t her being a decent person.
I have also never knowingly heard her music. It’s not that I avoid her, I just have never listened to pop music in lieu of jazz, classical, or world. But she does seem to be an upstanding person for the most part.
Well, we got some overriding scenario blasting away all nuance.
It’s hard to be sympathetic toward a fundamental privacy limitation associated with flying in a plane exclusively owned by you. So in this context, it’s easy to equate “Leave Taylor alone!” with "it’s sad how she can’t fly in her private jet without being tracked, there’s nothing she can do!’
Now broadly speaking, I get that a lot of unreasonable piling on is coming with it, but the private jet is a symbol of excess and environmental harm and it’s inherently a risk to hop into that whole mess. Particularly when she could charter private flights to the same effect without the tracking (still excess and environmental harm, but at least obfuscated from public eye a bit).
I never said she should be left alone or that it’s sad that she can’t fly without being tracked.
I don’t care if she can be tracked when she flies. I said she was in the wrong here. All I said was that she generally comes across as a decent person.
Yeah, unfortunately, it’s the internet so we don’t take kindly to nuance around here.
Its a bit more complicated than that.
Traffic cameras are usually publicly accessible. You are also, generally, allowed to take pictures of people when they are in public spaces where there is not an expectation of privacy.
So at what point of this is the line crossed?
That is where this gets pretty murky. Because we all more or less acknowledge that parparazzi taking pictures of everyone leaving an airport are assholes (unless it is about figuring out if The Rock is going to come do PR to distract people from the WWE sexual slavery scandal…). But we have no issue with knowing that without even needing to send someone over to see who got off the 1235 LAX->DFW flight.
And while my initial stance is “fuck the super-rich”: I am allegedly part of a private chat for “people in tech” to give each other a heads up if we see a CEO getting off a flight. Because if your boss is pretty regularly visiting Facebook HQ and not telling anyone? That is the sign that you need to refresh your CV because you might get layed off after an acquisition/merger. There are definitely business reasons for not making it trivial to track individuals.
So yeah. I am going to side on the stance of “if you need to travel secretly, wear sunglasses like the rest of us”. Or, if you are too famous to even risk that, at least use one of the private jet companies rather than owning your own. But I also think this is something that we need to actually consider from a legal and privacy standpoint and it is a lot more complex than that.
That’s fair, but that’s a discussion about how accessible the info should be. If it’s public, it’s public, and the public has equal access to it. If it shouldn’t be that easy to access, we fix the system, not punish the users. And suing is punishment/aggression, regardless of the outcome. Self defense isn’t free.
Unfortunately, the way the legal system adapts is through precedent.
“Optimally”? That kid drops it before any legal action is actually followed up on (no harm, no foul). Then they and Swift work with the various lobbyist/activist groups to push this farther on their side.
Or the kid is an idiot and it goes to court and we begin the appeals escalation right then and there.
I don’t think your analogy works, because, as long as you know the plane’s identifier, you can just type it into a website and see where it is.
https://planefinder.net/
That’s all you have to do.
How do you get that identifier for Taylor Swift’s plane? That part I don’t know and maybe that part is where her case lies, but I have a feeling she has no case or Musk would have tried the same thing.
Anyone can write a trivially simple program to analyze license plates (or even car profiles) and feed it traffic cam footage. I’ve done that for poops and giggles (never pushed since it was sketchy). Have broadband and a few medium sized computers and you can process the entirety of a state’s traffic cameras. At which point, it is trivial to track 455M4N’s '92 buick.
Where can I find live traffic cameras with high enough resolution to read license plates? I’ve only seen traffic cameras with something like 320x240 max.
You know how back in the day, Mythbusters would joke about “adding blah”? Or how a lot of chemistry and engineering youtubers won’t provide the exact specifics once they start working with a gun or something meth adjacent?
Its one of those things where if you have the basic understanding of how these systems work, you can find it pretty trivially (or work around things). And if you don’t? Then you really don’t need to know.
That’s a lot of words to avoid saying you’re talking out your ass.
“Yeah, I could totally tell you. Honest. Promise. No I can’t because… uh… I’d have to kill you.”
That’s still not the same thing because the FAA is a federal organization and you’re talking about something you can only do in certain municipalities. Traffic camera footage is not available universally and a city may not even use them.
Hmm. Its almost like
Just because you can do something or it is even legal to do something doesn’t mean you “should”. That is why it is important to reassess laws and the like from time to time.
I feel like your example is way more granular than what is going on here. It’s more like ‘so and so has arrived at this city airport now’ and within an hour or two they could be anywhere in a fairly large radius without anyone reporting their location. Also there is the fact that this is ‘punching up’ which is often seen as ok.
I don’t pretend to have an answer here, but it’s hard to feel sorry for celebrities.
Don’t worry, it’s happening to you even if you’re not super rich. And it’s being sold.
I am suspicious as to whether that is a “legit” site at all…
But yeah. Even mentioned below. It is REALLY not an insurmountable problem. But apparently people don’t understand why people might not want to give step by step instructions for how to do something that, in my opinion, is fundamentally “bad”. Can’t imagine what would happen if Mythbusters talked about “adding blah” or Burn Notice did the “and other stuff” short hand for “Yo dog, this shit is not something we should explain the details of”
I’m pretty sure that’s a legit site. It’s a product being sold by TransUnion which is one of the big credit reporting agencies.
I see absolutely nothing wrong with any of that info being presented in that way
Never meet your heroes.
I don’t listen to her music, I’d hardly call her my hero.
our hero.
Okay
And transponders transmit. With a significant amount of power in fact.
Weird, it’s almost like they have to to have any usefulness.
At all.
You can’t stop the signal, Mal.
LOL 6 downvotes as of this comment. Fans are gonna fan I guess.
Im seeing ~300 up
It was positive even when I commented, I was just surprised at the number of downvotes.