A few days ago, Whatsapp co-founder and former Facebook employee Brian Acton joined the Delete Facebook campaign by posting tweets encouraging individuals to delete their accounts on the social media website. His position against the social media website comes in the wake of Facebook’s data breach scandal with Cambridge Analytica.
Elon Musk, the famous CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, shared Acton’s opinion and took to the micro blogging website to show support to the campaign.
Indeed, the eccentric CEO retweeted Brian Acton’s tweet asking, “What’s Facebook?”
What’s Facebook?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 23, 2018
Another Twitter user then suggested Musk to delete SpaceX’s Facebook page and lived up to his words.
“I didn’t realize there was one. Will do,” he replied.
I didn’t realize there was one. Will do.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 23, 2018
Someone else then suggested he should delete Tesla’s Facebook page as well.
“Definitely. Looks lame anyway,” the CEO of both companies said.
Definitely. Looks lame anyway.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 23, 2018
Apparently, Elon Musk did indeed delete both corporate pages despite the fact that SpaceX’s page boasted more than 2.7 million likes.
Restoring the pages of both companies will not be a problem and it is possible that Elon Musk is just joking around. However, Facebook must be worried that additional companies follow suit which would mean that the website is not as indispensable as everybody thought it is. However, SpaceX used Facebook extensively, especially to broadcast their rocket launches via Facebook Live which suggests that its CEO was somehow a little bit impulsive in his actions.
It is possible that the Musk vs Mark situation goes far beyond the data breach issue. Indeed, last year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk had a little spat when Zuckerberg said that people imagining and propagating end of the world scenarios about artificial intelligence were irresponsible. While Elon Musk shared several times that AI could contribute to the end of humanity.
Back then, Elon Musk replied to Zuckerberg’s comment by stating,“I’ve talked to Mark about this. His understanding of the subject is limited.”
To add salt to injury, a SpaceX rocket carrying a Facebook satellite accidentally exploded during its launch in 2016, to which Zuckerberg shared, “I’m deeply disappointed to hear that SpaceX’s launch failure destroyed our satellite.”