Social media users fumed as news reports about Facebook sharing a Nebraska teen's DMs with cops investigating her for allegedly aborting her pregnancy circulated online.
Aug. 10, 2022Updated: Aug. 10, 2022 1:47 p.m.
The #DeleteFacebook hashtag caught fire on Twitter Tuesday.
Boris Zhitkov/Getty Images#DeleteFacebook is trending online this week in response to news that Facebook shared a Nebraska teen's messages to her mom with cops investigating the teen for allegedly getting an abortion in violation of Nebraska state law.
Celeste Burgess, 17, was charged in July with allegedly removing, concealing or abandoning a dead body and hiding another person's death following a medication abortion that police say she had at 23 weeks of pregnancy. Nebraska bans abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Jessica Burgess, her mother, also faces charges for allegedly helping to end the pregnancy.
The #DeleteFacebook hashtag caught fire on Twitter Tuesday after news stories came out about Facebook sharing the Burgess's DMs—allegedly describing how they carried out Celeste's medication abortion—which began circulating across social media platforms.
"Every woman should delete Facebook right now," Houston-based activist Olivia Julianna tweeted Tuesday afternoon, along with "#DeleteFacebook" and later a link to a Forbes article in her thread. The tweet has amassed more than 113,000 likes and more than 33,000 retweets (and counting).
Users also included the hashtag in tweets, warning others to protect themselves while communicating online and to call on Facebook to add encryption to its messaging utilities. "If you don't #DeleteFacebook, at least make sure you never talk about anything over Facebook Messenger that you wouldn't want turned over to the police," journalist Emily Crockett posted to her followers Tuesday.
The digital privacy advocacy group Fight For The Future pushed Facebook to encrypt its users' personal chats: "Sure #DeleteFacebook if you want. But let's be real, many people won't. So instead, let's demand that Facebook implement default end-to-end encryption on all DMs," the organization's account tweeted Thursday evening.
As the hashtag gained steam online, Facebook's parent company Meta jumped in to refute any news reports about the shared DMs, arguing that the reporting was "just plain wrong." In a statement released on its corporate site, a Meta spokesperson wrote that the company "received valid legal warrants from local law enforcement on June 7, before the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The warrants did not mention abortion at all."
"Court documents indicate that police were at that time investigating the alleged illegal burning and burial of a stillborn infant," the spokesperson continued. "The warrants were accompanied by non-disclosure orders, which prevented us from sharing information about them. The orders have now been lifted."
English (United States) ·