Fewer people may see your latest exploits via Facebook today than would have yesterday thanks to a trending hashtag: #DeleteFacebook.
The tag trended briefly on Twitter Tuesday as a response to the scandal over Facebook user information that wound up in the hands of political advertisers without users’ consent. Another indication of momentum behind the sentiment is this Reddit post that’s received 120,000 up-votes and over 7,000 comments in less than 24 hours.
The online anger stems from a complex story involving what seemed to be fun Facebook app, a firm named Cambridge Analytica, a pink-haired whistleblower named Christopher and the Trump campaign, among others. You can catch up with the help of my colleague Ian Sherr’s handy primer on the whole sordid story in the video above.
Bottom line, though, is that Facebook may not have done such a hot job safeguarding our information over the past few years. No surprise, that’s drawn the ire of social media users, including “Silicon Valley” actor and comedian Kumail Nanjiani:
I don’t know how anybody can continue using Facebook.
— Kumail Nanjiani (@kumailn) March 19, 2018
Serial entrepreneur and investor Jason Calacanis teased a plan to unveil a new social media platform:
MIT scholar and activist Ethan Zuckerman pointed out that many people, particularly in developing countries, now rely on Facebook as their primary form of connectivity, making simply deleting it not very practical:
This is critically important. Being on Facebook=Being on the internet in many countries. Making Facebook better is harder and more important than walking away from it. https://t.co/bXy2b2v7ES
— Ethan Zuckerman (@EthanZ) March 20, 2018
UK-based comic Joe Heenan made his own argument, of sorts, for staying on the platform:
#DeleteFacebook
I’d love to but how will I find out if it’s snowing?
How will I see racist comments from people from High school that I hated?
Where else will I be able to take a quiz that’ll tell me what character I would be from Are You Being Served?— joe heenan (@joeheenan) March 20, 2018
Comedian Sarah Cooper concurred:
I don’t know if I can delete Facebook, how else am I going to watch the kids of people I barely know grow up
— Sarah Cooper (@sarahcpr) March 20, 2018
Still others wondered why Facebook refugees felt any more comfortable venting on a different social platform.
Cybersecurity professionals like Rob May were in more of an “I told you so” sort of mood about the whole affair:
And of course there are those who claim they knew from the very beginning:
If this is a hashtag you can get behind, we’re here to help you make that lifestyle change and do the Facebook purge.
First published March 20, 12:13 p.m. PT.
Update, 1:50 p.m. PT: Adds more tweets tagged with #DeleteFacebook.