April 03, 2018
In the series of consequent events, post Facebook-Analytica-Scandal, Facebook faces another blow, however this time it’s from Elon Musk. The SpaceX founder recently took Twitter to troll Facebook. He randomly responded to the WhatsApp’s co-founder’s tweet and then deleted the official pages of SpaceX and Tesla from Facebook. Here’s how it all unfolded.
Brian Acton, the founder of Signal and co-founder of WhatsApp, which is now in acquisition of Facebook, tweeted the trending hashtag #DeleteFacebook on Mar 21. In response to the tweet, Elon Musk defrocked with a tweet “What’s Facebook?”
The tweet caused a media storm on Twitter, and caused one user to prompt Musk for making light of the situation, daring him to delete the official pages of his company from the platform.It seems like a little peer pressure goes along way as Musk actually deleted those pages losing thousands of followers.
Later when Musk was asked if he’ll also delete his accounts from Instagram, he responded with “Instagram’s probably ok imo, so long as it stays fairly independent. I don’t use FB & never have, so don’t think I’m some kind of martyr or my companies are taking a huge blow. Also, we don’t advertise or pay for endorsements, so … don’t care.”
This is definitely not the first time a passive war between these two tech-geniuses has caught the attention of media. The rift between them became apparent when Zuckerberg in one of his live Facebook broadcast called Musk a naysayer and irresponsible.
The comments were in reference with Musk’s longstanding worries on AI’s progress, as Elon never made his speculations on the whole“Artificial Intelligence Apocalypse” a secret. In July 2017, at the National Governors Association summer meeting, he even told the attendees that he keeps sounding the alarm bell,“but until people see robots going down the street killing people, they don’t know how to react.”
To Mark’s remarks, Musk responded on twitter with “I’ve talked to Mark about this. His understanding of the subject is limited.” This rift has opened the under discussed debate on the future of AI. Let’s see what this recent squabble will lead to.
Resources:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/17/15980954/elon-musk-ai-regulation-existential-threat
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/07/musk-vs-zuck/535077/
https://futurism.com/elon-musk-delete-facebook-spacex-and-tesl-zuckerberg-beef/
