Posted on March 26, 2018 at 10:16 AM

#Deletefacebook Challenge Sees Elon Musk Delete Spacex and Tesla from Facebook

The challenge comes after a report which showed that Facebook had shared data of more than 50 million users.

Facebook has gone through a tough period this week after some revealing revelations. Reports indicated that the company had given a British firm, Cambridge Analytica, access to its user’s profiles.

The social media network have access to at least 50 million users profiles to the firm, which was hired by the Trump administration for the 2016 election campaign. Cambridge Analytica is believed to have influenced the Brexit referendum vote and the 2016 American election as a result of its data.

As a result of the revelations, there has been an ongoing trend and hashtag on Twitter, called the #DeleteFacebook challenge. Elon Musk happened on the challenge when replying WhatsApp co-founder, Brian Acton, who had earlier tweeted to his users to delete Facebook. After replying to the tweet feigning a lack of knowledge of what Facebook was, Musk was challenged by another user to delete the Facebook pages of SpaceX and Tesla.

Musk, who apparently did not know that there was a page for the two companies, proceeded to delete the pages and since then, they have been inaccessible. The two pages showed error messages noting that the pages had been removed from the popular social media network.

The #DeleteFacebook challenge has only been limited to the parent company. However, considering that Facebook also owns WhatsApp and popular photo sharing app, Instagram, users might be tempted to also proceed and delete their accounts there too. If so, Musk might face a huge problem because SpaceX has 3 million followers while Tesla has 4.1 million followers on the platform.

The tech billionaire is believed to be an advocate for data privacy and the recent action only goes to cement that belief.

Mark Zuckerberg however, will have to face the consequences of the recent revelations on his own. The United States Congress has requested his presence and testimony. The EU law-making equivalent has also signaled their intent in making an investigation into the matter. The British government has already started an investigation into the issue. The social media platform moved to remove the Cambridge Analytica firm from their website after the revelations.

Cambridge Analytica denies any wrongdoing. The company’s servers have been requested by the British government so that they can carry out their own investigation. The authorities want to know how much information the company gave to its clients and what it had in the first place. The company is also facing further investigation after a video surfaced showing its boss reveals the dirty tricks they could use to get someone elected. The company, however, noted that the conversation in the video was being led by the journalist, and they had not done anything wrong in particular.