Elon Musk had the official Tesla and SpaceX company Facebook pages deactivated after being challenged by his followers to have the pages taken down amid the #deletefacebook movement.
Before the pages were deactivated they had more than 2.6 million Likes and Follows.
It started on Twitter when a user asked Musk to delete the SpaceX page on Facebook.
Musk responded to the tweet saying that he “didn’t realise” that his SpaceX brand had a Facebook page. “Literally never seen it even once,” he wrote on Twitter. “Will be gone soon.”
Another user shared a photo with Musk of Tesla’s official page on Facebook and asked if it should also be taken down. Musk wrote back: “Definitely. Looks lame anyway.”
The pages were taken down within minutes of his posts.
The actions make Musk the highest-profile figure in the tech industry to cut company ties with Facebook after it was reported that Cambridge Analytics, a firm that worked for Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, harvested personal data from 50 million Facebook users without users’ knowledge or consent.
Facebook used SpaceX in 2016 to launch a communications satellite. However, the satellite, valued at over $200 million, was destroyed because the rocket exploded on the launch pad.
After Musk deactivated the Tesla and SpaceX Facebook pages a reported tweeted “@elonmusk blew up Mark Zuckerberg’s satellite,” Mr Must replied: “Yeah, my fault for being an idiot. We did give them a free launch to make up for it and I think they had some insurance.”
