Elon Musk Deletes SpaceX And Tesla Facebook Pages In #DeleteFacebook Protest

Facebook has been embroiled in an almost obscene amount of controversy this past week, as governments begin to ask the social networking giant how a third-party firm managed to acquire comprehensive details on 50 million of its users. A year ago, the idea that Facebook was abused to steer the US election could have been considered a conspiracy, but now, it's widely believed to be likely.

Not long after this story originally broke, there was an immediate uptick in the number of people deciding to close or delete their Facebook account. Before long, #DeleteFacebook became a trending hashtag, and it's growing momentum.

For a regular user to delete their Facebook account, it may not seem very dramatic. But what about deleting a Facebook account with millions of followers? None other than Elon Muck just gave us a taste of what that can be like, after he decided to have the SpaceX and Tesla accounts purged on a whim - all because a Twitter user suggested it.

I didn’t realize there was one. Will do.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 23, 2018

Through various comments, Musk gives the impression that he didn't even realize his companies had Facebook pages, although that seems a little hard to believe for someone so savvy in social networking. Nonetheless, when Musk makes a decision, he definitely makes a decision, and with 5 million followers across the two accounts, everything Musk touches generates huge numbers. Even if they're just being deleted.

It's not entirely clear if the accounts are actually fully deleted, or simply closed, because on our end, it would appear the same anyway. However, Musk didn't decide to do this just to spite Facebook, but because he wanted to prove a point about the importance of our privacy. It's safe to say his point has definitely been made.