Elon Musk Wants You to Delete Facebook

In case you haven’t heard, Elon Musk is over Facebook. In response to Sacha Baron Cohen’s tweet calling for increased regulation of the social media platform over the weekend, the Tesla founder suggested a much simpler solution, tweeting, “#DeleteFacebook It’s lame.”

Baron Cohen, who has also been a vocal critic of tech giants including Twitter and Google, questioned Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s ability to “control the information seen by 2.5 billion people,” tweeting that “Facebook needs to be regulated by governments, not ruled by an emperor!”

#DeleteFacebook It’s lame

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 8, 2020

As CNN noted, the actor and comedian has previously criticized social media in general, calling it “the greatest propaganda machine in history,” while accusing Facebook specifically of profiting off propaganda by not fact-checking political ads. Despite mounting criticism, Facebook has doubled down on many of its most controversial policies in recent months, defending its stance on political advertising and announcing that hate speech from politicians will be permitted on the platform on the grounds that it is inherently newsworthy if it comes from a political figure.

This isn’t the first time Musk has taken aim at Facebook, either. The Tesla CEO deleted the official Facebook pages for his Tesla and SpaceX companies back in 2018 amid the Cambridge Analytica scandal, tweeting, “What’s Facebook?”

What’s Facebook?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 23, 2018

However, as CNN pointed out, Musk maintains a personal Instagram account (as well as official accounts for Tesla and SpaceX), despite the fact that the platform is owned by Facebook. Musk has previously said that Instagram is “probably ok” as long as it stays “fairly independent” from its parent company, which seems increasingly unlikely considering the company’s recent rebrand was purportedly designed to increase transparency surrounding the company’s other social media holdings.

Musk’s call to delete Facebook follows author Stephen King’s announcement earlier this month that he, too, was ditching the platform, presumably because it’s lame.

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