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Open-source flight trackers have been repeatedly used to break news over the last few weeks

Vice: “More than 700,000 people were tracking the flight path of the U.S. military plane believed to be carrying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi this morning. She touched down in Taiwan at 10:50 pm local time, making Pelosi the first high-ranking American official to visit the self-governing island in 25 years, amid threats of a military response from China. People were watching the flight’s progress on FlightRadar24, a flight tracking site that uses open-source data to track flights. FlightRadar24 and tools like it, such as ADS-B Exchange, have been particularly useful in recent weeks, as people have used it to track private jet routes live for celebrities such as Taylor Swift and Kylie Jenner to planes to Russian Oligarchs and now, Nancy Pelosi.  FlightRadar24 has had so much traffic today that the home page reads: “We are seeing a high demand in users wanting to access our services. As a temporary measure there is waiting room to prevent crashing. Paying subscribers can log in to bypass the waiting room.”

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