When it comes to twitter rebuttals and controversial remarks on fellow tech entrepreneurs, Elon Musk isn’t any better than Donald Trump, but the man’s notorious presence on social media does make up for his companies’ lack of advertising budget.
Anything he touches, creates or tweets conjures a massive publicity storm and becomes trending news. This week’s topic on Musk’s Twitter account: Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook’s data harvesting scandal.
Musk announced on twitter account last week that he plans to delete the Facebook pages for both of his companies
Musk Hops on the #DeleteFacebook Bandwagon
Ever since the Facebook’s data breech scandal hit the news, Elon Musk has unleashed a massive torrent of twitter posts accusing Mark Zuckerberg of jeopardizing the safety of millions of Facebook users and saying that the Facebook CEO has ‘limited knowledge’ on all things AI.
The internet sensation went one step further and announced that he is deleting fan pages for both of his companies, Tesla and SpaceX from Facebook in support of the trending hashtag #DeleteFacebook. Could one of the world’s most sensational entrepreneur’s boycott mean trouble for Zuckerberg and his social media empire?
Musk, who isn’t very active on Facebook, found out only last week that his companies, Tesla and SpaceX, have popular fan pages on the social networking site with millions of followers. Within moments of finding out, the Tesla CEO deleted both of the pages.
Musk’s bold move has probably horrified his companies’ social media managers – but Musk wouldn’t be Musk if he didn’t do what he set his mind to, without caring about what the rest of the world thinks.
A Publicity Stunt?
Although Musk has deleted Facebook pages for both of his companies, he doesn’t have any intentions to do the same with his Instagram account which is his second-favorite means of community outreach after Twitter. It seems like his beef is primarily with Facebook instead of its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who also owns Instagram.
Musk has an impactful presence on Twitter where every single one of his tweets gets thousands of likes and shares from his diehard followers. Tesla CEO loves the platform so much that he even uses it to get his followers’ opinions on crucial manufacturing decisions such as implementing change to vehicle software.
Many are speculating that deleting Facebook pages for his two companies and announcing it on Twitter was a publicity stunt from Musk, but if he really cared that much about free advertising, he wouldn’t have deleted the two pages which had a combined userbase of 5.2 million followers and wiped off his companies’ names from the most popular social networking site which had been used for Tesla advertisements and live streams of SpaceX rocket launches.
Musk said in a tweet that his company had never done any paid advertising on Facebook or participated in the influencer trend to buy people’s opinions on his products. “A product’s life depends on its own merits,” he added.
Tesla and SpaceX Facebook pages had a combined userbase of more than 5 million followers before Musk deleted them both
Opposing Views on Artificial Intelligence
The Tesla chairman also took a jab at Mark Zuckerberg in one of the tweets, saying that the Facebook CEO doesn’t have sound understanding of issues related to artificial intelligence. The insult came after Zuckerberg’s interview in which he indirectly called Musk a ‘naysayer’ and said that his negative views on AI are irresponsible.
When one of the twitter users sent snippets of the interview to Musk, the tech savvy entrepreneur responded that he had discussed about artificial intelligence with Zuckerberg in lengths but the Facebook seemed to have ‘limited understanding’ of the topic.
This isn’t the first time Musk have voiced his criticism against Mark Zuckerberg. Last year, when Facebook released its own home assistant named Jarvis, named after Tony Stark’s computer from Iron Man, which resembled Google’s Alexa in many ways and had the capability of managing home security, dimming lights and playing music, Musk dismissed the technology by saying that it wasn’t really AI.
It’s obvious that Musk isn’t a huge fan of AI and thinks that creating technology that is smarter than humans could have disastrous consequences and threaten the existence of our species. Zuck, on the other hand, says that he is keen to push the boundaries of deep Artificial Intelligence and prove to ‘naysayers’ like Musk that computers aren’t the villain.
