Brian Acton, co-founder of Whatsapp chose his side concerning the recent backlash against Facebook after reports of the misuse of its data by a firm linked to Donald Trump’s election campaign. Indeed, the former Whatsapp CEO joined the movement #deletefacebook via a twitter post on the microblogging site.
It is time. #deletefacebook
— Brian Acton (@brianacton) March 20, 2018
Brian Acton tweeted “It is time. #deletefacebook,” to his 21,000 followers. Brian Acton has past personal dealings with Facebook for the company he founded, Whatsapp, was bought by the thumbs up platform in 2014 for $16 billion. While the other co-founder of Whatsapp, Jan Koum, chose to continue leading the company, Acton decided to leave the message app company this year only to start his own foundation.
Facebook are currently in hot water as lawmakers are scrutinizing Cambridge Analytica’s unethical use of 50 million Facebook users’ personal data to target voters as thereby bias the last Presidential campaign. The wrongdoings all begun in 2014, when Aleksandr Kogan, an academic of Russian origins created a Facebook app, which remunerated thousands of users participating in a psychological test. The app also asked the users for the personal details of their Facebook friends. After getting the results of the test, Kogan sold the data to Cambridge Analytica, a US voter profiling company.
By selling the data, Kogan violated Facebook policies for he was not authorized to use the data collected to make benefits.
On Tuesday, the social media network’s shares fell for a second consecutive day, closing down at 2.5 percent especially since investors are now concerned about being associated with the firm and how it could tarnish their reputation, discourage advertisers and invite investigations against them. The company has already lost around $60 billion of its stock market value and the troubles surrounding Facebook might not end very soon, to Mark Zuckerberg’s dismay.
Reacting to the speculations, Facebook announced two days ago that it would hire a digital forensics firm to investigate the data leak. In a statement from Facebook, the company said that forensics firm Stroz Friedberg would “conduct a comprehensive audit of Cambridge Analytica”. The company has also agreed to comply with authorities and give access to their servers and systems.
Aleksandr Kogan has also agreed to collaborate while Canadian data analytics expert, Christopher Wylie, who is responsible of exposing the data leak to Medias and working with Kogan, refused to assist the audit.
“This is part of a comprehensive internal and external review that we are conducting to determine the accuracy of the claims that the Facebook data in question still exists,” the California social network giant said.