Elon Musk axes Facebook pages for Tesla and SpaceX (after finding out they’re there)
Facebook suffered another blow today: Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, had those two companies’ official pages removed from the embattled social network.
Musk’s action came after it was pointed out to him on Twitter that SpaceX actually had an official Facebook page. “I didn’t realize there was one,” he tweeted.
The context for Musk’s wild and woolly tweetstorm is the controversy over Facebook’s handling of personal data from users. A series of reports found that the information was mishandled, and ended up being used inappropriately to micro-target voters in the 2016 presidential election.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized for what he said “was clearly a mistake.” Nevertheless, critics have pushed forward with a #DeleteFacebook campaign. That’s what drew Musk into the fray. Here’s how the debate over the issues (including a joking reference to “The Princess Bride” and the fact that Musk remains active on Instagram, a Facebook subsidiary) went down on Twitter:
It is time. #deletefacebook
— Brian Acton (@brianacton) March 20, 2018
What’s Facebook?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 23, 2018
It's a place for dumb people who believes Mark and submit their personal data so that it can be harvested.
— ᐸSathish /ᐳ (@sathish4vy) March 23, 2018
Inconceivable! Who’d say a thing like that!?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 23, 2018
