Elon Musk has taken a decidedly anti-Facebook stance by deleting his Facebook page, as well as the pages for both Tesla and SpaceX.
By now, people are well used to the 46-year-old business magnate making bold and unpredictable moves.
However, withdrawing from the world’s biggest social media platform – where his pages enjoyed around 2.6 million Likes and Follows each – is certainly a striking statement.
This internet exodus came in the wake of the #DeleteFacebook challenge, where some individuals and companies are deleting their Facebook pages following the social media platform’s Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Many people have lost trust in the social media giant after it became apparent data from around 50 million users had been harvested by political analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica.
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Musk’s entrance into this particular saga was sparked by a tweet by computer programmer Brian Acton, which read:
It is time. #deletefacebook
Interestingly, despite his anti-Facebook stance, Acton is the co-founder of WhatsApp which was acquired by Facebook back in 2014.
Replying to this call to action, Musk quipped, ‘What’s Facebook?’
The eccentric entrepreneur was quickly reminded of the presence of his SpaceX page, which appeared to have slipped his mind, and was given the following challenge:
Delete SpaceX page on Facebook if you’re the man?
He casually replied to this revelation/dare with the same sort of shrug one would usually reserve for re-discovering extra teabags at the back of the cupboard:
I didn’t realize there was one. Will do.
He was then asked to delete the Tesla Facebook page. He promptly agreed, saying how the page ‘Looks lame anyway.’
Staying true to his word, the pages appeared to vanish, as if they had been sent soaring into outer space.
Musk will reportedly be keeping his companies’ accounts on Instagram, which is also owned by Facebook.
However, he has described Instagram as being ‘borderline’ due to Facebook’s influence ‘slowly creeping in.’
Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg recently made the following statement on the Cambridge Analytica scandal through a Facebook post:
We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you.
I’ve been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn’t happen again.
The good news is that the most important actions to prevent this from happening again today we have already taken years ago. But we also made mistakes, there’s more to do, and we need to step up and do it.
Zuckerberg added:
I started Facebook, and at the end of the day I’m responsible for what happens on our platform. I’m serious about doing what it takes to protect our community.
While this specific issue involving Cambridge Analytica should no longer happen with new apps today, that doesn’t change what happened in the past. We will learn from this experience to secure our platform further and make our community safer for everyone going forward.
I want to thank all of you who continue to believe in our mission and work to build this community together. I know it takes longer to fix all these issues than we’d like, but I promise you we’ll work through this and build a better service over the long term.
The debate over whether or not Elon Musk is indeed ‘the man’ continues.
Jules studied English Literature with Creative Writing at Lancaster University before earning her masters in International Relations at Leiden University in The Netherlands (Hoi!). She then trained as a journalist through News Associates in Manchester. Jules has previously worked as a mental health blogger, copywriter and freelancer for various publications.