Facebook Loses Playboy as Magazine Deletes Accounts in Support of #DeleteFacebook
Playboy has just announced that it is dropping Facebook. Starting late Tuesday, March 27, some 25 million fans will no longer find the controversial magazine on the social media platform, which is now embroiled in a user data sharing scandal that sparked the #deletefacebook movement.
Seemingly implying that Facebook has been hypocritical in its treatment of businesses and its users, Playboy Enterprises has come out with a press release this Wednesday, March 28, announcing their withdrawal from Mark Zuckerberg's social media platform.
"For years, it has been difficult for Playboy to express our values on Facebook due to its strict content and policy guidelines. We have been faced with the only alternative being to alter Playboy's voice in order to meet Facebook's views of what is and is not appropriate on its platform," Playboy's message prefaced their news.
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The press release went on to say that while Playboy has been dealing with the challenges Facebook's policies presented to their brand. It's the same company that has now mismanaged the data of its users, and among them, the magazine's more than 25 million fans.
"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," Playboy's release continued, going on to announce that they are leaving behind Facebook by deactivating all Playboy accounts that they were directly managing.
Cooper Hefner, Chief Creative Officer for Playboy and the son of the late Hugh Hefner, posted his own version of their announcement earlier on Twitter.
"We are stepping away from Facebook," he simply captioned his message, letting the photo's text speak for itself. In his account of their departure from Facebook, he noted that it was on learning of Facebook's possible role in the latest US election that was the last straw, so to speak.
Playboy deleting their Facebook pages and deactivating their accounts is the latest high-profile development for the #deletefacebook movement, which was recently joined by tech billionaire Elon Musk.
In a series of posts on Twitter, Musk has gone from making a dismissive remark at Facebook to going ahead and getting rid of the Tesla and SpaceX business pages on the platform. "I didn't realize there was one. Will do," Musk replied to a user who reminded him that his two businesses had Facebook pages at the time.
Before that, it was WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton who was calling for users to get rid of their Facebook accounts. A whistleblower has recently revealed that Cambridge Analytica, a London-based political consultancy firm, was able to harvest the personal information of 50 million Facebook users which was then used as part of their strategy for the 2016 US elections.
