Elon Musk Deleted Facebook Pages for Tesla and SpaceX

The Tesla CEO didn’t know they existed anyway.

byRob Stumpf|
Elon Musk Deleted Facebook Pages for Tesla and SpaceX
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Tesla's CEO Elon Musk might be a controversial man with his Twitter rebuttals and quick-thinking, but if there's one thing it makes up for, it's the lack of Tesla's advertising budget. Everything the man seems to touch or conjure up brings out the huddled masses to discuss the impact it has on the world. Today's topic: Facebook.

In a series of Tweets, the Internet sensation had learned that one of his companies had a Facebook profile active. Within minutes of finding out that it actually existed, the page was deleted, something which probably frightens our social media manager just as much as it does SpaceX's.

Musk is a notorious Twitter user and isn't particularly active on Facebook. He tends to use Twitter and Instagram as his primary means of community outreach, even going as far as implementing change requests to vehicle software by users making suggestions through the platform. So, of course, when he finds out that Tesla also has a Facebook page, he soon ordered that to be deleted as well.

Musk's companies have a combined userbase of over 5.2 million users between the two pages. A form of free advertising (given Musk's statement that Tesla "doesn't advertise") and viral marketing through live streaming of Space X launches and a strong cult-like following of loyal customers and window shoppers.

Though political discord seems to have no publicized part in Musk's reason to delete the company's Facebook accounts, Musk seems to have accidentally joined the current #DeleteFacebook. The movement itself spawned from a recent data breech which revealed private information of more than 50 million users to political data firm, Cambridge Analytica, in 2014. The data was then applied in what the company calls a "psychographic voter model" to influence voters in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Ironically enough, this didn't keep users from claiming the CEO is more of a troll than ever, to which he happily obliged the title.

Don't take this as a slam at Musk. I'll be the first person to admit that I hold a high opinion of the work that companies under his management strive for, and even (with no good reason, mind you) bought one of his Boring Company Flamethrowers. The man might make decisions quickly but when he does, it's usually free advertising for his brands. Don't worry though, Musk's Twitter and Instagram are staying safe and sound for now.

"We’ve never advertised with FB. None of my companies buy advertising or pay famous people to fake endorse," Musk said in a Tweet, "Product lives or dies on its own merits."

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