Jeremy Deller's #deletefacebook flyer campaign hits London and Liverpool

Thousands of pink flyers instructing users how to delete their Facebook accounts have been distributed across London and Liverpool, including outside Facebook's UK headquarters. The campaign, by Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller, responds to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where data from 50 million Facebook profiles was harvested via an app and used by Donald Trump's campaign team. Deller had prepared the text months earlier, printing it on a t-shirt for the reopening of Kettle's Yard gallery in February 2018. The action is commissioned by Rapid Response Unit (RRUNews), a 'public news bureau' opened last month in Liverpool's St John's Market, which employs artists, musicians, and writers to offer an alternative to traditional news. The flyers join a global #deletefacebook movement. The article also contextualizes artistic critiques of tech giants, citing Paolo Cirio and Alessandro Ludovico's Face to Facebook (2011), which 'stole' 250,000 online identities, and Les Liens Invisibles' Sepuukoo (2009), a ritual suicide of one's online identity. The 2017 exhibition Escaping the Digital Unease at Kunsthaus Langenthal, curated by Raffael Dörig, Domenico Quaranta, and Fabio Paris, featured artists Zach Blas, James Bridle, and Trevor Paglen addressing digital discomfort.