Delete Facebook, says WhatsApp founder Brian Acton as data scandal continues

'It is time'

It is time to delete Facebook, one of the founders of WhatsApp has said.

Brian Acton's warning comes as the growing scandal over Facebook's use of data threatens to damage the company.

"It is time. #deletefacebook," he wrote on Twitter.

The post has been shared more than 4,000 times, and is one of only two posts he has shared since 2016. Mr Acton didn't expand on his reasoning or post any follow-up tweets, but it comes amid a troubling few days for Facebook.

After reports revealed that data firm Cambridge Analytica had been using Facebook to gather data about people and attempt to manipulate them into voting, attention has turned to the ways that the social network enables the collection of people's most personal information. The Cambridge Analytica scandal is just the beginning of the problems that social networks have with the use of data, experts have suggested.

Mr Acton got $6.5 billion from Facebook, when it acquired its app in 2014. But he didn't stay on, unlike his co-founder Jan Koum, who still serves as chief executive of the WhatsApp.

It's not clear whether Mr Acton is suggesting that people also stop using his own app, which is being ever more tightly integrated with Facebook. The two companies have been criticised over data sharing between WhatsApp and Facebook.

Since Mr Acton left WhatsApp he has been heavily involved with Signal, a competing chat app that prides itself on being secure in the ways it uses people's data.