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Tesla CEO Elon Musk responds to Whatsapp founder’s #DeleteFacebook, deletes SpaceX, Tesla Pages
After taking down SpaceX, Tesla and his own official pages from Facebook, the billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has now justified his action.
It’s not a political statement and I didn’t do this because someone dared me to do it. Just don’t like Facebook. Gives me the willies. Sorry.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 24, 2018
The Facebook pages of SpaceX and Tesla disappeared minutes after Musk responded to a comment on Twitter calling for him to take down the official pages in support of the #DeleteFacebook movement.
WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton urged his followers to delete Facebook by tweeting: “It is time.”
A minute later, Musk replied to Acton, the founder of WhatsApp, which Facebook had acquired for $19 billion several years ago.
Acton, who has since left Facebook, had on Wednesday called for people to “#deletefacebook.” “What’s Facebook?” Musk replied. Then Musk announced he would shut down the SpaceX and Tesla pages. He said the Tesla Facebook page “looks lame anyway.”
Prior to the deletion, both the two pages had over 2.6 million Likes and Follows, and super high engagement rates.
ALSO READ: Cambridge Analytica-Facebook row: Zuckerberg formally asked to testify by US Lawmakers
The boycott “#DeleteFacebook” started after the US and British media reported that the data of more than 50 million Facebook users were inappropriately used by Cambridge Analytica, in activities allegedly connected with US President Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign.
“I don’t use FB and never have, so don’t think I’m some kind of martyr or my companies are taking a huge blow. Also, we don’t advertise or pay for endorsements, so a don’t care,” he tweeted.
We’ve never advertised with FB. None of my companies buy advertising or pay famous people to fake endorse. Product lives or dies on its own merits.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 23, 2018
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has admitted that his company had made mistakes in a data leak that caused grave concern about user privacy possibly abused for political purposes.
