Why big brands are dropping social media

JD Wetherspoon is a massive pub chain in the UK. They publicly and very vocally closed down all their social media accounts. It’s not just JD Wetherspoons: Playboy had 25 million followers and they shut down theirs too. Elon Musk and Tesla have binned social media completely. Celebrities across the globe are saying goodbye to social media in droves: Adele, Justin Bieber, Kanye West, Ed Sheeran, Rihanna… so many you lose count.

Back to JD Wetherspoon: Why has such a prominent, socially inspired pub company dropped their entire social media strategy? Well, they gave four official reasons:

1 Social doesn’t work for them. In fact their Founder specifically said “I don’t believe that closing these accounts will affect our business whatsoever.”

2 Online trolls and fake news made life a misery for too many ‘prominent people.’

3 They refuse to support the addictive nature of social media. (Admittedly a little rich coming from a pub company who sells alcohol for profit.)

4 The data privacy scandal that rocked Facebook was the straw that broke the camel’s back.