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Will Ferrell

Source: Frazer Harrison / Getty

 

Will Ferrell has joined the small group of public figures making their way off of Facebook, seemingly for good.

The social media platform is still seeing backlash and losses from reports that research firm Cambridge Analytica improperly gained access to the personal information of more than 50 million Facebook users. The website has lost billions in shareholder value in the last couple of weeks and has since made several changes to its privacy policies–but for many people, that’s just not enough.

“I know I am not alone when I say that I was very disturbed to hear about Cambridge Analytica’s misuse of millions of Facebook users’ information in order to undermine our democracy and infringe on our citizens’ privacy,” Ferrell wrote to his fans in a Facebook post. The comedian announced that he’d leave the page live for 72 hours in order to let the post circulate, which means he will deactivate his account on the platform somewhere around 2 p.m. on Friday.

He later elaborates in the post, “In this day and age, with misinformation running rampant, it’s important that we protect the truth, as well as those who work to bring it to light. I can no longer, in good conscience, use the services of a company that allowed the spread of propaganda and directly aimed it at those most vulnerable.”

CEO Mark Zuckerberg was seemingly not too worried about a significant amount of users leaving the platform, and said last week that he hadn’t seen a “meaningful number of people” deleting Facebook following the leak. That number seems to be going up though, as other figures beside Ferrell, like Elon Musk, make their Facebook exits very public.

The tech entrepreneur said on Twitter that he’d be deleting the Facebook pages for Tesla and SpaceX, both of which have indeed disappeared since.

Cher tweeted, too, that she would be deleting her Facebook account. She describe the decision as a difficult one,  because the platform has helped her with charitable efforts and has a lot of “amazing young people” on the site.