If you’re a fan of long-running magazine Playboy and enjoy the publication’s various Facebook accounts, here’s some unfortunate news: the company has announced it is has become the latest big name to withdraw from the platform over the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
In a statement published late Tuesday night, Playboy said it was deactivating its various pages following "the recent news about Facebook's alleged mismanagement of users' data." It added that over 25 million fans engage with the company through its Facebook presence, and it does “not want to be complicit in exposing them to the reported practices.”
“Playboy has always stood for personal freedom and the celebration of sex. Today we take another step in that ongoing fight,” wrote the company.
On Twitter, Cooper Hefner, Playboy’s chief creative officer and son of late founder Hugh Hefner, said Facebook continues to be “sexually repressed,” and that its content guidelines and corporate policies continue to contradict its values.
We are stepping away from Facebook pic.twitter.com/4yFIdk2eDE
— Cooper Hefner (@cooperhefner) March 28, 2018
News that political-advertising company Cambridge Analytica used the data of 50 million Facebook members, gathered by a now-defunct firm called Global Science Research, has plunged the social network into its biggest crisis ever.
Not only has the company’s share price been falling, but the #deletefacebook campaign continues to gain traction; even WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton has joined the cause (as has Will Ferrell). Last week also saw Elon Musk pull the Facebook pages of Space X and Tesla, while Mozilla and Commerzbank stopped running their ads on the social network. Additionally, the controversy has resulted in Facebook postponing the unveiling of its smart speakers at May’s F8 developer conference.
If you absolutely must get a social media fix of Playboy, Tesla, and Space X, all three are still on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook.
