The messy history of #DeleteFacebook: Why the trend is one thing the left and right are agreeing on

• Users from the left and right have joined the #DeleteFacebook trend, for different reasons.
• In May, people used the hashtag to protest the suspension of Trump's Facebook accounts.
• The trend picked back up after Biden said Facebook is "killing people" with vaccine misinformation.

Social media users from both sides of the political spectrum have joined calls to #DeleteFacebook this summer, albeit for different reasons.

This week, the trend resurfaced as the top hashtag on Twitter after President Biden said that Facebook is "killing people" by spreading vaccine misinformation, a statement he later walked back.

-Dena Grayson, MD, PhD (@DrDenaGrayson) July 15, 2021

On a New York Times podcast earlier this month, White House Chief of Staff Klain said, "I've told Mark Zuckerberg directly that when we gather groups of people who are not vaccinated, and we ask them, 'Why aren't you vaccinated?' and they tell us things that are wrong, tell us things that are untrue, and we ask them where they've heard that. The most common answer is Facebook," Insider's Allana Akhtar reported.

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Previously, the trend was used to protest the suspension of Trump's Facebook accounts following the US Capitol insurrection. In May, the Oversight Board defended the move, ruling that the suspension was justified but that indefinite suspension was not permissible without "criteria for when or whether the account will be restored."

-Mark Meadows (@MarkMeadows) May 5, 2021

In 2019, #DeleteFacebook became the most popular hashtag on Twitter after Politico reported that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had been holding off-the-record dinners with influential conservatives including Tucker Carlson and Lindsey Graham.

In response, Zuckerberg wrote a Facebook message that read, in part, "I have dinners with lots of people across the spectrum on lots of different issues all the time. Meeting new people and hearing from a wide range of viewpoints is part of learning. If you haven't tried it, I suggest you do!"

-Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) October 14, 2019

The tech giant's political volatility on both sides of the aisle comes as Congress releases 5 bipartisan bills that could regulate Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Apple - the biggest legislative step toward reigning in big tech to date.

Republican and Democratic lawmakers agree that industry needs more oversight. Similar to #DeleteFacebook, the unlikely consensus has arisen for different reasons, ranging from antitrust concerns to Republican claims about conservative censorship.

Facebook did not respond to Insider's request for comment.