[imagesource: Michael Corrin/ Bloomberg ]

Social media platforms have a wonderful way of showing powerful people the true force of collaboration.

When people online are passionate about an issue, scores of them band together and whip up a digital frenzy.

Recently, Twitter activists took aim at the second richest man in the world, Bernard Arnaud.

Bernard, CEO of the luxury goods group LVMH, tends to fly around a lot, and whenever he does, his aeroplane emits a disgusting amount of carbon.

According to Euro News, many climate change activists have been unhappy about these emissions, so much so that they created a Twitter account called @I_Fly_Bernard:

A lesson from the world’s second richest man!

Bernard Arnoult has sold his private jet after being tracked by climate activists.

Accounts such as @i_fly_Bernard and @laviondebernard created on Twitter to track the private jet of Mr Arnoult and other b…https://t.co/R8HVVE9toW

— Defuse® (@DefuseGlobal) October 20, 2022

The account has made the effort to monitor the billionaire’s movements, as well as his flight data, which has been posted on the account a number of times:

“Indeed, with all these stories, the group had a plane and we sold it”

“The result now is that no one can see where I go because I rent planes when I use private planes.”

The billionaire may have evaded his digital trackers for the moment but who is to say that another Sherlock and Watson won’t crop up and share his rental usage online?

Bernard is not the first affluent person to find themselves in the firing line.

Not that Kylie Jenner cares much.

Taylor Swift also caught some heat from the Twitterverse for her aerial movements, saying that over the course of a few months, the superstar took 129 flights.

That is a massive carbon footprint – 8 294 tonnes of carbon dioxide, to be exact – more than 1000 times greater than the average person’s carbon footprint.

You may also recall that teenager who set up a Twitter account to track Elon Musk’s jet movements. The world’s richest man offered the account admin $5 000 to shut it down, an offer that was refused.

Those are two very different approaches from the world’s wealthiest.

Bernard may be the most recent scalp claimed by activists on Twitter but he most certainly won’t be the last.

I can think of a few names that they may need to go after next.

[source:euronews]