As Facebook executives are being grilled for allowing Cambridge Analytica to harvest and misuse 50 million Facebook subscribers, WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton (who sold WhatsApp to Facebook in 2014 for $19 billion) is calling on his Twitter followers to delete their Facebook accounts.
Early Wednesday morning, Acton tweeted: “It is time. #deletefacebook.” Acton did not originate the hashtag #deletefacebook – it has been roaming the various social media for a few days, but Acton is likely to add an impact to the latest anti-Facebook movement. It certainly helped that Cambridge Analytica’s were caught on video bragging about their utter contempt to issues such as the truth, the value of political debate, and privacy. They even bragged about using Eastern European women to seal their deals with clients, and openly suggested trapping political opponents into sounding as if they are engaged in corruption.
Acton has his own pony in this race, having launched Signal, a competitive encrypted communications app for Android and iOS as well as Linux, Windows, and macOS, which uses the Internet to send one-to-one and group messages, including files, voice notes, images and videos, and make one-to-one voice and video calls.
Last year, a former Facebook VP, Chamath Palihapitiya, shared her “tremendous guilt” for bringing into the world tools “that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.”
The Federal Trade Commission is reviewing a possible 2011 Facebook violation of its consent decree with the commission regarding its privacy practices.
As a result of all of the above and more, Facebook shares are down more than 15%.