#DeleteFacebook and the consumer backlash of 2018: How social media fatigue, consumer (mis)trust and privacy concerns shape the new social media reality for consumers

Facebook’s rise to ubiquity over the last decade came to a dramatic halt in March 2018 after a massive data breach, including improper use of consumer data, was revealed, followed by the most significant one-day stock devaluation in recent history. The business model on which Facebook has sustained itself for years had a fatal flaw, and consumers were the ultimate victims — their backlash began swiftly and was categorised online under the #DeleteFacebook hashtag. To assess the impact of said backlash, this paper examines user-generated content (ie tweets) created by consumers in the days immediately following the Cambridge Analytica crisis. This paper will provide insight into the emergent themes surrounding this brand crisis for Facebook and how consumers wish to move forward in their interactions with the platform. The study uses textual analytics to identify topics and extract meanings contained in an unstructured textual dataset composed of Twitter data. Themes surrounding privacy, fear of missing out, helpfulness, and account deactivation emerged from the analysis. Managerial implications for advertisers are presented.