With tweets like “Facebook is the root of evil” and a $50bn loss in market vaule, the world’s most popular social media platform is hurting real bad.

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It all started after it was learnt that political consultancy firm, Cambridge Analytica, may have improperly gained access to data on 50 million Facebook users.

The consulting firm worked on President Donald Trump’s election campaign. The data was reportedly used by the political data analytics firm to push out targeted ads for Trump.

To defend itself, Facebook said on Monday that it had hired forensic auditors from Stroz Friedberg to investigate and determine whether Cambridge Analytica was still in possession of the data which should have been long deleted.

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“Auditors from Stroz Friedberg were on site at Cambridge Analytica’s London office this evening,” the company said.

“At the request of the UK Information Commissioner’s Office, which has announced it is pursuing a warrant to conduct its own on-site investigation, the Stroz Friedberg auditors stood down.”

But that didn’t stop Facebook’s shares from going down nearly seven percent and losing over $50 billion in market value.

The saga resulted in the trending #DeleteFacebook hashtag.

Brian Acton, WhatsApp co-founder, on Wednesday became the latest high profile personality to tweet in support of the hashtag.

He wrote: “It is time. #deletefacebook”.

Acton and Jan Koum, his co-founder, sole WhatsApp to Facebook for $16 billion in 2014.

The controversy comes in the wake of allegations that Russia may have used Facebook tools to sway US voters with divisive and false news stories before and after the 2016 election.

Meanwhile, London-based Cambridge Analytica says it deleted all Facebook data it obtained from a third-party application in 2014 after learning the information did not adhere to data protection rules.

The US Congress has called on Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, to testify before it.



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