Elon Musk pulls Tesla and SpaceX from Facebook

Entrepreneur Elon Musk has had the official Facebook pages for his Tesla and SpaceX companies deleted.

 
The #deletefacebook movement has grown after data firm Cambridge Analytica was accused of obtaining the personal information of about 50 million users.

Mr Musk had poked fun at speaker brand Sonos after it said it would suspend advertising on Facebook for one week.

His followers challenged him to have his own companies' pages deleted, which he did within minutes.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/977209817012977665?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fnews%2Ftechnology-43514648&tfw_creator=BBCNews&tfw_site=BBCNews

Mr Musk said 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 follower pointed out his firm Tesla also had a profile on the social network.

"Looks lame," he replied. Both profiles disappeared within minutes of his posts.

The pages had more than 2.5 million followers each before they were deactivated.

In 2016, Facebook used SpaceX to launch a new communications satellite valued at more than $200m (£150m).

However, the rocket exploded on the launch pad and destroyed the satellite.

After a reporter tweeted that "@elonmusk blew up Mark Zuckerberg's satellite", Mr Musk 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."

He said he would continue to use Facebook-owned Instagram for the time being, but lamented "FB influence is slowly creeping in".

Original Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-43514648
IMAGES: AFP