Elon Musk joins #DeleteFacebook, deletes accounts of SpaceX and Tesla

Elon Musk joins #DeleteFacebook, deletes accounts of SpaceX and Tesla

CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk, joined the #deleteFacebook movement not just in words but actually in actions.

Soon after revelations that Cambridge Analytica, a New York-based data mining and analysis company, received personal details of over 50 million Facebook user accounts and used them to push targeted advertising to sway and influence public opinion, Brian Acton, WhatsApp Co-founder and former Facebook employee, voiced his views with a tweet

What’s Facebook?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 23, 2018

Earlier today, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, responded to Brian Acton’s tweet and playfully asked, “What’s Facebook?”. After some light-hearted banter things got quite serious as one Twitter user dared Musk to delete SpaceX’s Facebook page, if “he was the man”.

I didn’t realize there was one. Will do.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 23, 2018

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had in a statement said the company is cracking down on how user data is shared.

Shortly thereafter, Tesla and SpaceX’s Facebook pages were deleted as promised.

Musk also responded to another Twitter user’s comment regarding his own and his companies’ prolific use of Instagram, also owned by Facebook. Musk tweeted that Instagram was “borderline” since Facebook’s “influence is slowly creeping in”.

Prior to their deletion, the SpaceX and Tesla Facebook pages had over 2.6 million likes and follows, and high engagement rates. It isn’t apparent whether deleting the pages was a well-thought-out plan or a spur-of-the-moment reaction to requests on Twitter.

But it will be interesting to see if this will actually have much impact on SpaceX and Tesla’s bottom line or their respective brands. Both companies have a fairly large offline presence and their own company websites.