Earlier this month, a whistleblower revealed that Facebook’s information center was compromised in a huge data breach that led to Cambridge Analytica harvesting the information of over 50 million users. Facebook scrambled to deactivate the account of the whistleblower from within and cover up the scandal, but they were caught, and as a result, the #DeleteFacebook movement was born.
It wasn’t a flash in the pan, either. The company’s stock has plummeted, and company CEO Mark Zuckerberg is out billions of dollars ahead of the legal battles he will undoubtedly face for the whistleblower incident. Now, major influencers are joining #DeleteFacebook, with WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton (who, it should be noted, made billions off Facebook) urging his followers to join the cause, and now Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk doing the same.
Musk publicly deleted the Facebook accounts for both SpaceX and Tesla, and seemed to endorse that other people follow suit. For sure, his actions here will resonate with some contingent of his following, so things are likely to only become worse for Zuckerberg. The CEO has already said “It’s not good,” regarding the movement, but we have yet to see if he’ll take any drastic action to win back the public’s favor.