Elon Musk deletes Tesla and SpaceX Facebook pages

Entrepreneur Elon Musk has deleted the Facebook pages of Tesla and SpaceX, providing support to a campaign which is calling on people to stop using the social networking website in response to a data scandal.

Musk deleted the pages on late Friday morning in response to a tweet from WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton, who has called on people to delete their Facebook accounts. Musk, responding to the tweet, wrote: “What’s Facebook?”

In response to people who pointed out that SpaceX and Tesla have Facebook pages, Musk explained that he wasn’t aware that his companies had a presence there. SpaceX and Tesla had more than 5.3 million followers combined.

Both pages were deleted a short time later, though Musk stopped short of deleting pages on Instagram, which is also owned by Facebook. Musk, Tesla, and SpaceX have more than 14 million followers combined on their Instagram pages.

Facebook has come under increasing pressure after it was revealed that British political data firm Cambridge Analytica had obtained and used the personal data of more than 50 million Facebook users. It has added to criticism over Facebook’s role in the spread of misinformation.