Elon Musk has erased Tesla and SpaceX presence from world’s biggest social media platform in minutes. It was not expected that he would do something big like that in minutes, raising questions about his friendship with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
It all started on Twitter when Elon Musk replied to Brian Acton’s tweet calling people to delete Facebook. Brian Acton is the founder of WhatsApp which he sold to Facebook for $19 billion several years ago. The platform that made him a Billionaire tweeted on Wednesday- “It is time. #deletefacebook” after it was revealed that Facebook allowed Cambridge Analytica, a firm that managed Trump’s election campaign, to obtain and misuse personal data on 50 million users.
Elon Musk replied, “What’s Facebook?” and then after some follow up tweets from Twitter users asking to delete his Facebook presence, he announced that he would delete Tesla and SpaceX pages. He apparently was not aware that his company SpaceX had a Facebook page.
Minutes after, SpaceX page was erased from the platform followed by Tesla. In one of his replies, he said Tesla Facebook page “looks lame anyway.” Each page had around 2.6 million followers. Elon Musk’s move to delete his and his companies Facebook pages could trigger #deletefacebook movement.
We already know what happened between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg when they shared their views on artificial intelligence. Elon Musk expressed his worries about AI running amok and that it could become so powerful it would start wars. Zuckerberg, on the other hand, indirectly called Musk a “naysayer” saying “people who are naysayers and kind of try to drum up these doomsday scenarios — I just, I don’t understand it. I think it’s really negative and in some ways, I actually think it is pretty irresponsible.” Elon Musk, in reply to Mark, said that he had spoken to him about AI and came to know that his understanding of the subject is limited.
Here’s what happened and why people are deleting their Facebook accounts:
Facebook got into a big trouble when it was revealed that the social media giant had a big role to play in Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal and its stock price has been declining since then. It is the biggest breach of trust between Facebook and its users since the 2016 elections. The data mining firm had improperly obtained access to personal data of more than 50 million users which the company used to target political ads to voters in an unfair way during Trump’s election campaign.
To recall, Cambridge University researcher named Aleksandr Kogan created an app that collected millions of users data and shared it with Cambridge Analytica illegally. The firm obtained this information in total violation of Facebook’s rules. In 2015, the Guardian reported that Kogan had shared data from his app with Cambridge Analytica. Facebook went to Kogan and Cambridge Analytica and demanded to delete all the data they have collected. But according to reports, both of them never deleted the data and Facebook never investigated if they have done what it demanded. Facebook also never informed people about it, that their data had been improperly used.
Mark Zuckerberg opened up to Facebook users after five days on Wednesday explaining the scandal in a post and also listing steps that he has already taken and the steps he is going to take to protect users data. He said that in 2013, Aleksandr Kogan created an app on its platform which was installed by around 300,000 people. Those who installed shared their personal data as well as their’s friends data. Facebook in 2014 limited the data apps like Kogan’s could access. App creators could no longer ask for data about a person’s friends unless their friends had also authorized the app. And now, to further prevent users data from getting misused, Facebook will remove developers’ access to the collected data if users haven’t used their apps in three months.
A lot happened since the Cambridge Analytica revelations, senators are calling on Mark Zuckerberg to testify, the Federal Trade Commission is investigating and also the British authorities. Facebook also lost its stock market value in billions in over last few days.
