Days after Elon Musk deleted the official pages of Tesla and SpaceX, now Playboy magazine has become a new entrant in the list. Amid barrage of criticism of Facebook for not able to safeguard user’s data in the case of Cambridge Analytics, American men’s lifestyle and entertainment magazine has suspended its official Facebook page. In a statement, Playboy said that the recent news about Facebook’s alleged mismanagement of users’ data had solidified its decision to suspend its activity on the platform.
Currently, Playboy has more than 25 million followers who engage with various Facebook pages, and company is of the view that it do not want to be complicit in exposing them to the reported practices. “That is why we have announced that we will be leaving Facebook’s platform, deactivating the Playboy accounts that Playboy Enterprises manages directly,” said a note.
Playboy products, services and publications revolve around sexual content. Even, when it was using Facebook, the social media strict policy had ensured that it did not go overboard on sharing photos and videos on its platform. Playboy said while that has challenged its business objectives and the ability to reach its audience in an authentic way, but recent allegation of mismanagement of user’s data is something that it can’t ignore.
On March 17, two-newspapers, the London Observer and The New York Times broke the story that UK-based data firm Cambridge Analytica acquired millions of Facebook users’ personal information to build software that could target potential swing voters in political campaigns, including US President Donald Trump’s 2016 election bid, Brexit referendum and some elections in India.
We are stepping away from Facebook pic.twitter.com/4yFIdk2eDE
— Cooper Hefner (@cooperhefner) March 28, 2018
Since then many technology stalwarts including WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton started #DeleteFacebook campaign. Consequently, the celebrated CEO of Tesla and SpaceX Elon Musk removed the official pages of his companies from Facebook. More recently, Apple CEO Tim Cook had slammed Facebook policies terming that it is too late for Facebook to regulate. “It should have done it much earlier,” he said.
