Overview

#DeleteFacebook is an online campaign and hashtag regarding public outrage towards the social networking website Facebook, following the revelation that the data mining firm Cambridge Anayltica had accessed the information of more than 50 million Facebook users without consent.

Background

On March 17th, 2018, in a series of interviews with The New York Times, the Observer and the Guardian, former Cambridge Analytica employee Christopher Wylie said that using money from Republican and Trump donor Robert Mercer and former White House advisor Steve Bannon, the data mining firm Cambridge Analytica harvested private information from more than 50 million Facebook users without their permission.^[1][2]

On March 16th, 2018, Facebook announced that they would be suspending Startegic Communication Laboratoris (SCL), who owns Cambridge Analytica from the platform. They wrote in a statement:^[3]

Kogan requested and gained access to information from people after they chose to download his app. His app, “thisisyourdigitallife,” offered a personality prediction, and billed itself on Facebook as “a research app used by psychologists.” Approximately 270,000 people downloaded the app. In so doing, they gave their consent for Kogan to access information such as the city they set on their profile, or content they had liked, as well as more limited information about friends who had their privacy settings set to allow it.

Although Kogan gained access to this information in a legitimate way and through the proper channels that governed all developers on Facebook at that time, he did not subsequently abide by our rules. By passing information on to a third party, including SCL/Cambridge Analytica and Christopher Wylie of Eunoia Technologies, he violated our platform policies. When we learned of this violation in 2015, we removed his app from Facebook and demanded certifications from Kogan and all parties he had given data to that the information had been destroyed.

Facebook's Response

On March 16th, 2018, Facebook announced that they would be suspending Startegic Communication Laboratoris (SCL), who owns Cambridge Analytica from the platform. They wrote in a statement:^[9]

Kogan requested and gained access to information from people after they chose to download his app. His app, “thisisyourdigitallife,” offered a personality prediction, and billed itself on Facebook as “a research app used by psychologists.” Approximately 270,000 people downloaded the app. In so doing, they gave their consent for Kogan to access information such as the city they set on their profile, or content they had liked, as well as more limited information about friends who had their privacy settings set to allow it.

Although Kogan gained access to this information in a legitimate way and through the proper channels that governed all developers on Facebook at that time, he did not subsequently abide by our rules. By passing information on to a third party, including SCL/Cambridge Analytica and Christopher Wylie of Eunoia Technologies, he violated our platform policies. When we learned of this violation in 2015, we removed his app from Facebook and demanded certifications from Kogan and all parties he had given data to that the information had been destroyed.

Development

On March 20th, another whistleblower, Sandy Parakilas, who was paid to investigate these types of data breaches said that Facebook had no control over the data given to outside developers. He said, "Once the data left Facebook servers there was not any control, and there was no insight into what was going on."^[4] He continues to say that it is likely that a majority of Facebook users have had their data harvested.

That day, the hashtag "#DeleteFacebook" began trending on Twitter. Throughout the day, various media outlets, including Time,^[5] the Verge,^[6] TechCrunch,^[7] CNN^[8] and more, ran pieces on how and/or why to delete personal Facebook accounts. Users posted screenshots and articles of themselves deleting their accounts (shown below).

Zuckerberg's Response

On March 21st, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted an explanation of Facebook's relationship with Aleksandr Kogan and Cambridge Analytica on the website.^[10] In the post, Zuckerberg promised to "investigate all apps that had access to large amounts of investigate all apps that had access to large amounts of information before we changed our platform to dramatically reduce data access in 2014, and we will conduct a full audit of any app with suspicious activity." Additionally, he said that Facebook would restrict developers' access to data and help users understand which apps have access to user data. The post received more than 174,000 reactions, 26,000 comments and 54,000 shares in 24 hours.

Following the release of the post, people online criticized Zuckerberg for not apologizing for the data breach (examples below).

Later that day, Zuckerberg appeared on CNN and formally apologized for the data breach. In the interview, he laid out what happened to allow this type of breach and what Facebook would be doing in the future to prevent this type of problem. The post (shown below) received more than 177,000 views in less than 24 hours.

Meanwhile, The Onion^[11] published a satirical article titled "Mark Zuckerberg Promises That Misuse of Facebook User Data Will Happen Again and Again."

On March 25th, Zuckerberg took out full page advertisements in newspapers in the United States and the United Kingdom apologizing for the leak, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Observer, The Sunday Times and more.^[12] He wrote:

"We have a responsibility to protect your information. If We can't, we don't deserve it.

"You may have heard about a quiz app built by a university researcher that leaked Facebook data of millions of people in 2014. This was a beach of trust, and I'm sorry we didn't do more at the time. We're now taking steps to make sure this doesn't happen again."

On March 20th, Tesla founder Elon Musk responded to a #DeleteFacebook tweet. During the course of the conversation, Twitter^[13] user @serdarsprofile tweeted," Delete SpaceX page on Facebook if you're the man?" Musk responded, "I didn't realize there was one. Will do." The post (shown below) received more than 3,400 retweets and 18,000 likes.

Later in the thread, another user asked him to delete the Tesla Facebook page as well.^[14] He agreed and said, "Definitely. Looks lame anyway." The post (shown below, right) received more than 1,500 retweets and 11,000 likes in three days.

On March 27th, the magazine Playboy announced that they would be deactivating their Facebook accounts. They wrote^[15] in a statement.

"While that has challenged our business objectives and the ability to reach our audience in an authentic way, the recent news about Facebook's alleged mismanagement of users' data has solidified our decision to suspend our activity on the platform at this time. There are more than 25 million fans who engage with Playboy via our various Facebook pages, and we do not want to be complicit in exposing them to the reported practices. That is why we have announced that we will be leaving Facebook's platform, deactivating the Playboy accounts that Playboy Enterprises manages directly."

That day, actor and comedian Will Ferrell announced that he would be deactivating his Facebook account.^[16] In a post (shown below, he wrote, "I know I am not alone when I say that I was very disturbed to hear about Cambridge Analytica’s misuse of millions of Facebook users’ information in order to undermine our democracy and infringe on our citizens’ privacy. I was further appalled to learn that Facebook’s reaction to such a violation was to suspend the account of the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower." The post received more than 5,700 shares, 50,000 reactions and 3,800 comments in 24 hours.

Related Memes

Zucked

Following the Cambridge Analytica story, some online began using the Zucked to express Facebook's privacy regulations (example below, left and center).

On March 25th, Redditor^[17] danorankia posted a variation of the He Protec meme with the three parts "he Zucc," "he cucc," "Yo Private Data… He Abducc." The post (shown below, right) received more than 4,500 points (93% upvoted).

Search Interest

External References