1 in 10 US Facebook Users Deleted Account: Survey

Facebook Inc. (FB) bears have a new bit of ammo supporting their thesis that a #DeleteFacebook and Occupy Silicon Valley movement will continue to gain momentum and take down Mark Zuckerberg's social media behemoth.  (See also: 'Occupy Silicon Valley' Trend Could Hurt Tech Stocks.)

A recent survey conducted by technology research group Techpinions found that 9% of 1,000 U.S. Facebook users said they had deleted their profiles completely due to privacy concerns in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. While this week the Silicon Valley giant's stock has experience a modest recovery as its CEO appears calm and collected in front of U.S. lawmakers, the high-flying FAANG stock saw roughly $100 billion shaved off its market capitalization in the weeks following its latest data crisis. Last month, news broke that political analysis firm Cambridge Analytica reportedly acquired information on over 87 million users without consent to aid the Trump campaign in crafting targeted ads in the 2016 presidential race. 

According to the Techpinions survey, 17% of respondents indicated that they had deleted Facebook from their mobile devices, while 11% said they had removed it from their other devices. (See also: ‘Revenue Juggernaut’ Facebook is 'Long-Term Hold’.)

Well Over Half Would Not Pay for Service

"Fifteen percent of our panelists said there is nothing Facebook can do to regain trust as they are just ready to move on to something else,” wrote Carolina Milanesi, principal analyst at Creative Strategies, a market intelligence firm that worked on the survey with Techpinions. “Of course, if this sentiment were to be similar across other countries, 15% of 2 billion users is a sizable chunk of the installed base that would disappear. What is interesting is that the number grows to 18% among people who are said to be very aware of the Cambridge Analytica indicent."

Out of the 1,000 individuals surveyed, 28% indicated that they had not trusted Facebook before the data crisis, while 35% said they are now less likely to use the platform following the news. About one third of respondents changed their settings after Cambridge Analytica, while a whopping 59% indicated that they would not be interested in a paid Facebook product without advertising and with stricter privacy protection guarantees.

The survey is counter to remarks made by Zuckerberg at his testimony in Washington this week, in which he said that there had not been a "meaningful" number of people who had deleted their Facebook account.