With over 4.92 million internet users and a penetration rate of 84 per cent in 2019, it is no surprise that Singaporeans are active social media users. Facebook ranks third in the list of top websites visited in Singapore, according to data gathered from Alexa. There is one influential individual, however, who might have a different opinion on the matter.
It all started when English actor Sacha Baron Cohen tweeted some insightful comments on Facebook regulations.
“We don’t let 1 person control the water for 2.5 billion people. We don’t let 1 person control the electricity for 2.5 billion people. Why do we let 1 person control the information seen by 2.5 billion people? Facebook needs to be regulated by governments, not ruled by an emperor!” said the tweet.
What followed was a response by engineer and business magnate Elon Musk who said that Facebook is “lame” and used the #DeleteFacebook in the tweet. With over 60,000 likes and 8,000 retweets, many replied to both Baron Cohen and Musk’s tweets.
“It’s also liberating. Facebook is a bane on society that keeps people from seeking newer and better things in life,” said one Alabaster Jones. “#DeleteFacebook and be free!” added the Twitter user.
Another Twitter user shared how a friend seemed to be the happiest person because of the lack of Facebook in her life.
It isn’t the first time that Musk threw shade on Facebook or its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. In 2018, he took down Tesla and SpaceX’s Facebook page after the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, which revealed that the personal information of more than 87 million Facebook users was harvested without their knowledge or consent.
In Singapore alone, it was reported that over 65,000 Facebook users could have been affected by the data breach.
Musk then went to Twitter to air his thoughts. “What’s Facebook?” he asked.
Although Musk, and his companies Tesla and SpaceX, have Instagram accounts, he perceived those to be “ok” as long as Instagram stays “fairly independent” from its parent company, Facebook, reported CNN.
Musk and Zuckerberg also have conflicting ideas when it comes to artificial intelligence, with the former seeing it as humanity’s “greatest existential threat” and the latter as a way to heighten safety and efficiency in the automobile and healthcare industries.
In the end, the decision to keep or delete Facebook rests solely on the hands of the user.
#DeleteFacebook It’s lame
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 8, 2020