The weaning process has begun: The Tesla and SpaceX Facebook pages have disappeared.

This was mere minutes after Elon Musk, the CEO of both companies, said that he had never seen the SpaceX Facebook page before and was going to delete it.

What triggered it?

Earlier in the week, WhatsApp co-founder, Brian Acton, tweeted: "It is time. #deletefacebook."

This prompted a response from Musk.

On Friday morning, Musk replied to Acton's tweet by asking: "What's Facebook?"

A random tweet then asked Musk: "Delete SpaceX page on Facebook if you're the man?"

Musk responded: "I didn't realise there was one. Will do."

In subsequent tweets, Musk reiterated that the SpaceX page "will be gone soon" and that he "literally never seen it even once."

In one of the last tweets before the deletion occurred, Musk said that Facebook's influence had started to affect Instagram, the photo-sharing app acquired by Facebook.

Less than 30 minutes after that, the official Facebook page for Tesla and SpaceX vanished.

Acton became a billionaire after Facebook bought WhatsApp for US$19 billion in 2014.

SpaceX's Facebook page had 2.6 million likes before it was deleted. SpaceX still has a profile on Facebook-owned Instagram.

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Musk throwing shade at Zuckerberg

A 2016 dispute may be at the heart of Musk's negative feelings toward Facebook.

Zuckerberg had blamed SpaceX then for a failed launch that destroyed a Facebook satellite.

Musk addressed the issue in a later tweet on Friday, taking the blame for the accident.

"Yeah, my fault for being an idiot. We did give them a free launch to make up for it and I think they had some insurance," Musk said in a tweet to Kerry Flynn from Mashable.

Yeah, my fault for being an idiot. We did give them a free launch to make up for it and I think they had some insurance.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 23, 2018

Watchers are saying this could just be Musk's way of messing around as the pages could be restored in the near future.

Here’s a totally unrelated but equally interesting story:

Are you a media freelancer? Were you promised better “exposure” instead of cash payment for your work?