WhatsApp Co-Founder: 'It Is Time' To Delete Facebook

The co-founder of messaging app WhatsApp, which was purchased in 2014 by Facebook, is now calling on the public to delete their Facebook accounts. Brian Acton on Tuesday posted a message on Twitter with the hashtag #DeleteFacebook.

It may be noteworthy that Acton was using social media to blast a social media giant. Acton is not active on Twitter, posting just 74 times since joining in 2009. He also doesn't have a verification checkmark.

Acton joined a growing chorus of voices calling for users to leave Facebook en masse after the ongoing Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Facebook has seen its stock price drop after it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica, a data-mining firm that supports right-wing political candidates, acquired Facebook users’ data without their knowledge and used it to assist Donald Trump in his successful 2016 presidential bid.

Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg have been criticized for potentially violating a 2011 consent decree in the transferral of data to Cambridge Analytica. The social media giant has also been the subject of scrutiny for allowing "fake news" to be seen on the site during the 2016 campaign.

Acton, 46, has a net worth of $5.5 billion, aided by the $22 billion sale of WhatsApp to Facebook in February 2014. The former Yahoo engineer now runs the Signal Foundation, a nonprofit that exists as a funding source for Signal, a security-heavy messaging service for people who value privacy in a world full of online surveillance.

Notably, Acton once applied for a job at Facebook in 2009 and was turned down. He talked about it in one of his 73 tweets prior to Tuesday’s #DeleteFacebook message.