SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has deleted the companies’ Facebook pages in response to the ongoing Cambridge Analytica brouhaha, joining some now-former Facebook users in their protest of the social media giant’s corporate behavior.
The move comes a week after revelations that Cambridge Analytica, a British data firm that contracted with the Donald Trump presidential campaign, retained private data from 50 million Facebook users despite claiming to have deleted it.
New reporting on Cambridge Analytica has spurred massive public outcry from users and politicians, with even CEO Mark Zuckerberg calling it a “breach of trust.” At least two lawsuits have been filed as a result.
In a Friday morning Twitter exchange with Ryan Mac, a BuzzFeed News reporter, Musk wrote that he “didn’t realize” that SpaceX even had a Facebook page and that Tesla’s “looked lame anyway.” The two pages were promptly taken down.
Musk did note that the companies’ Instagram accounts would stay for now.
Instagram’s probably ok imo, so long as it stays fairly independent. I don’t use FB & never have, so don’t think I’m some kind of martyr or my companies are taking a huge blow. Also, we don’t advertise or pay for endorsements, so … don’t care.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 23, 2018
According to comments from Zuckerberg, this new #DeleteFacebook campaign doesn’t appear to have any substantive impact on the platform’s bottom line. “I don’t think we’ve seen a meaningful number of people act on that, but, you know, it’s not good,” Zuckerberg told The New York Times this week.
https://arstechnica.com/?p=1281205
