Jeremy Deller distributes posters with step-by-step instructions on how to leave Facebook

Jeremy Deller’s latest campaign How to leave Facebook involves a series of pink posters instructing people on how to leave the social media platform. The information is laid out in six detailed bullet points from relevant hyperlinks to the final pop-up window and estimated time taken for the account to be deleted. The posters were distributed in London’s Liverpool Street station and Liverpool’s Lime Street station.

The campaign is a response to the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal whereby the firm harvested personal data from 50 million Facebook users in order to target individuals with tailored advertising including during the 2016 Trump presidential campaign. Mark Zuckerberg recently apologised publicly for the monumental privacy breach and announced that Facebook will change the way it transfers information to third parties. However, this only seemed to motivate Deller further. While speaking to The Guardian, Deller said he was driven by “a combination of reading about Facebook’s involvement in the US election, and Mark Z’s faux naive lack of accountability.”

How to leave Facebook was commissioned by the Rapid Response Unit News (RRU), a new Liverpool-based news platform that collaborates with artists to respond creatively to global events. According to The Guardian, the RRU News states: “All artistic content will be distributed freely across national and international broadcast, print and online media, with some performed or exhibited at venues across the city.”

This is not Jeremy Deller’s first time designing political, public work. Last summer, the Turner prize-winning artist created a series of posters that mocked Theresa May’s “strong and stable” campaign, which Deller transformed into “strong and stable my arse.” The artist is best known for The Battle of Orgreave in 2001, where Deller organised a public reenactment of a riot that took place during the 1984-85 UK miner’s strike.