John Oliver cited a 5000% rise in search queries related to leaving Meta and deleting accounts. Among the topics mentioned in the analysis, attention was drawn to early Facebook’s naivete with regard to moderation requirements, the constitutional framework, and a history of governmental interference.
Oliver debunks common right-wing “cry censorship” talking points, as well as the objective difficulty of moderation endeavors, and how direct threats by Trump may have influenced Zuckerberg’s turnaround.
Oliver went on to suggest Signal, Mastodon, Bluesky, and Pixelfed as alternatives that “do not seem as desperate to fall in line with Trump”. For those reluctant to completely ditch Meta, Oliver revealed a new site with step-by-step instructions to “make yourself less valuable to them”.
The guide was a collaboration with the EFF, and includes settings’ tweaks for Facebook and Meta, whose 98% of revenue comes from micro-targeting ads, the host previously cited, to increase privacy, and recommends Firefox, Privacy Badger, as “other measures” to take in order “to block advertisers and other third parties from tracking you”.
The segment culminated in a mock advert, in which the new Meta’s approach to moderation is coined as “Fuck it”, and hints to racism, internet scams, and calls to genocide running rampant on Meta’s platforms.
The clip reminds the origins of Facebook as a site to “rank college girls by hotness”, and its implication in genocide in Myanmar, which was more thoroughly discussed in an Oliver’s previous special on Facebook in 2018.
I don’t want to get my hopes up but is this Facebook’s MySpace moment?
My personal MySpace moment for Facebook was 10 years ago. Best choice ever made.
So much of Facebook is just automated accounts responding to automated accounts in order to milk gullible advertisers. If everyone logged off tomorrow, I don’t know if Zuckerberg would notice.
i have certainly notices a SHARP downturn of new content being added to insta and facebook by people i actually know over the last few years.
All that seems to be left is AI Slop and ragebait. a venn diagram that overlaps considerably
Seems like a win tbh. Meta stops influencing people and collecting their data, while dumbass corps waste money on ads nobody will see.
Meta will still influence people, because a lot of the influence is through news aggregators automatically ingesting what Facebook shows as “Trending” and regurgitates it elsewhere.
MySpace was way smaller than Facebook, it wasn’t even available where I am for most of its (meaningful) existence (I never had a MySpace despite being the exact target age range).
Nobody left MySpace because of enshitification
Even better. It’s the fediverses Facebook moment.
Not immediately or probably for some years. Facebook’s main problem is the fact its got an aging population and no young people joining. That’s why Meta bought Instagram and is desperate to get their grubby paws on TikTok or force it to close down in the West.
I think internally, over the next decade, FB will start to die off organically as Meta put ever increasing focus on retention and young people.
I don’t think so. There’s no good alternative to Facebook that is worth leaving it for. When MySpace died, there was a significantly better alternative (FB). Even if people quit using Facebook regularly, they’ll need to keep it.
What do people use Facebook for these days? (I deleted my account about 10 years ago so I’m not sure what it’s for now)
I’ve been gone from FB for about 3 months but for me it was the groups. You could find groups for anything, but I miss my local groups most. Particularly the No-Buy and vegan and political activist groups. Finding an equivalent outside of FB is sub par, if it even exists at all.
Yeah that does actually sound pretty decent.
There’s literally billions of people on Facebook, so probably not. But maybe it’s a start.
*Billions of accounts. Hard to tell how many are real people and how many are just slop throwing bots.