What a fucking idiotic shitstorm entirely of their own making.
Meta deserves all the shit they get for this transparent act of kowtowing.
They will get zero shit and there will be no repercussions or consequences and Zuckerberg knows that
It sure looks like they’re getting shit right now - I don’t disagree with your cynicism about long term effects though. If everyone “outraged” by this continues to use their service this will have very little effect on them in the long term.
You know all the older folk on there want is a place to see their folks and share pictures. Wonder why there isn’t a strong alternative
Zuck has been known to be an unethical person from the early days of Facebook when he constantly turned off people’s privacy settings.
“Technical problems.”
“Following” and “unfollowing” are pretty basic aspects of the service. How interesting that the “technical problems” only have to do with these specific accounts.
Anything under Meta (FB, Insta, WhatsApp), Twitter/X, TikTok - you should be considering these to be fascist mouthpieces and interpret information gained through them with that lens.
Personally I believe them only because meta has proven to be incompetent time and time again. I’m betting they migrated the followers to the new account, but forgot to update some foreign key and now it errors out when the old code tries to unfollow.
The malice though is in doing this new migration scheme instead of the old method of “update the profile picture and bio”.
I’d expect more broken things if that were the case?
Depends on how carefully they follow separation of concerns, I suppose. I’ve seen errors exactly like this before where old data couldn’t be deleted but new data could be deleted without issue.
To be clear, I am not defending them, nor am I entirely writing off the zuckbot doing this on purpose. Just without further evidence, it is easy for me to assume they are incompetent.
There are local servers all around the world. You generally interact with the one closest to you, but it isn’t the “single source of truth.” At some point changes should be reconciled with the source authority, but all the remote servers are trying to update the source at pretty much the same time. Resolving updates from your global diaspora of servers in an accurate manner is hard and you’re likely to see odd bugs arise, especially when a large number of people take similar actions at once. You can see this in trending viral video likes–toggling your like on and off or viewing the video at the same time from 2 different locations is likely to give you a different like count each time. You can also see this when Trump rebrands the official POTUS account and starts spewing his vitriol through it, large numbers of people will realize they don’t want to deal with his bull shit, and some of their updates will fail to resolve in a timely manner.
This doesn’t happen to everyone, but if you unfollow someone and it works you aren’t gonna complain.
Anything under Meta (FB, Insta, WhatsApp), Twitter/X, TikTok - you should be considering these to be fascist mouthpieces and interpret information gained through them with that lens.
Also never forget that Traitorapist Trump told 30800 documented lies in his first term, which comes out to 20-25 lies every day of the week. So we can expect that 20-25 lies are going to come out of Trump’s mouth every single day for the next 4 years.
After a decade of wondering why my friends still used Instagram, they’re finally talking about uninstalling it this week. So I’m all for these new features, keep em coming zuck!
Make sure to point them towards Pixelfed! The more people we can get onboarded to federated platforms, the better.
I’d love to uninstall it but I can’t follow the people I want to follow anywhere else
You wanna know why they’re there? Because you’re there. The ol’ catch-22 of social media walled gardens. Inconvenient for literally everyone except the guys running them.
Here’s hoping people figure out that the Fediverse is specifically designed to solve that problem.
Ah right, when I leave Instagram, the people who have 2 million+ followers are gonna follow me to the fediverse. Yup that’s how that works, thank you very much for being so damn helpful today.
Inb4 “if everyone does it”. If everyone stopped driving their car, the government would be forced to make our cities more walkable. But that’s simply not gonna happen is it?
Sorry you got downvoted. It’s not an unpopular sentiment, it’s just a very tired one at this point. If everyone who made that argument instead just left, the problem wouldn’t exist.
And yeah, the people you follow are there because it’s where their audience is. If you want them to move, you gotta be the change you wanna see.
I mean, you’re here, so I have to assume I’m preaching to the choir to some extent.
Lol less that 1% of users probably think about the prerequisite line of thinking to even start that argument, then probably 1% of those would make that argument. A fraction of a percent won’t cause any change at all.
What has been proven time and time and time and time again are that humans are extremely extremely lazy and will not do anything at all unless there is a direct and present threat to them or their way of life. Hence why the wealth gap can be almost the worst in history with only 1 person actually having done something at all meaningful about it across the world. People still haven’t moved off of fucking twitter, they aren’t going to move off of Instagram. Especially not when “influencers” that draw the most people make their livelihood specifically from being on Instagram.
People still haven’t moved off of fucking twitter, they aren’t going to move off of Instagram.
Most folks I know, and socialize with, and celeb-follow on twitter have left already. Some (a lot) for threads. Most for bsky. Some the fediverse.
You’d actually be surprised. I’ve seen a lot of tiktok creators cross posting to loops as well as rednote.
They know it’s there. Just feeling it out.
If everyone who made that argument instead just left, the problem wouldn’t exist.
That is simply not even true, because that would be like 0.01% of all Instagram users. It wouldn’t make a dent.
From my bubble, Meta and Zuckerberg are widely despised by the general public and have been for the better part of the last couple decades. I’ve never met a person who wants to be on their platform, only people who have to be. But you’re probably right, most of the users probably don’t even know who Zuckerberg is, or that Facebook ever renamed themselves.
But are the personalities you want to follow on there really pulling an audience that…simple?
well thanks for calling my friends dumb I guess
Ah right, when I leave Instagram, the people who have 2 million+ followers are gonna follow me to the fediverse.
Actually yes, creators will use social networks that contain a significant enough amount of their fans. By moving, you are helping to change their mind!
It’s the same defeatist attitude as “voting doesn’t matter because my 1 vote doesn’t change anything” except it can and does more often than you think.
no. if you want to compare it to politics, it’s like voting for a third party in the us. it’s 0.1% vs 99.9%
Having principles means being willing to give something up now and then, whether you get the outcome you want or not.
I already got rid of tiktok, twitter and facebook. Instagram is my last way of communicating with friends and to follow new releases of my favourite musicians etc. If I have to get rid of that too I might as well get rid of my phone and go live in a cave somewhere.
For favorite musicians, I’d follow them on Tidal instead. They usually put out the same kind of info.
Oh no you won’t be able to waste time online watching people who don’t give a fuck about you. What ever will you do? Have some principals and walk away.
You will survive and find some other dipshits to follow around don’t worry.
well idk what you’re doing but I’m not following dipshits
You don’t need everyone to do it, but if you can get enough people to do it, it will be foolish for those 2M+ follower accounts to not also have a presence on pixelfed or wherever. Most content creators are not limited to just one platform. Streamers will stream to Twitch, edit and upload the vod to YouTube, cut highlights and make shorts or tiktoks, etc.
What exactly are those people who you’re following doing for your quality of life? You need a car to get to work or do your errands. What does following a celebrity do for you?
a lot more than you are rn
The connections between social media use and low mental health are well documented. These “services” are being run by advertisement people who are taking advantage of that to prey on their users.
The good ol’ Collective Action Problem.
The thing is, you don’t have to leave in order to get out. I know it sounds oxymoronic, but let me explain.
You’re not limited to just one social media account, that much is obvious to everybody. So, create an account on a competing platform, and be the reason someone else is able to justify quitting. If someone else says “hey, I want to leave” and you also say “I want to leave too,” but neither of you have even made an account elsewhere, nobody ever leaves.
If you make a new account elsewhere, then when that person says “hey, I want to leave,” you can say, “follow me on Pixelfed,” and even if they don’t uninstall Instagram, and just make a Pixelfed account, you’re one less instance of
I can’t follow the people I want to follow anywhere else
to keep them stuck there. You’ve now had them make an account, then someone they know goes through the same process you did, and so on.
Eventually, the alternative is populated enough that deleting the old service isn’t difficult anymore. All you have to do is be one of the people to take the first step, and become the reason for someone else to justify leaving.
that’s true, I already have a bunch of fediverse accounts, though lemmy is the only one I frequently use
I had the same problem, left anyway so I wasn’t supporting… that, and it turns out it’s all ok on the other side. You’ll be ok.
I’ve ended up using Patreon way more now
How long before Zuckerberg does the Nazi salute on stage too?
I don’t think he will, but solely because he happens to be Jewish. Same reason Ben Shapiro won’t. Because ultimately these are the sort of people who think the nazis are bad not because of what they believed or did, but because of who they targeted.
Damn, I like the way you put that. Very succinct.
I’ve been saying it about Shapiro and Prager for years. Anyone can be a fascist regardless of background, it’s important to acknowledge the groups that were targeted and to understand that they will likely be targeted again, but acting like Jewish people, queer people, roma, etc are specially pure and good or like Germans, Italians, Japanese, and Spaniards are specially capable of evil is thinking in the lines fascism wants you to.
Fascism is wrong and evil because the ideas behind it are foolish and cruel. It turns class politics into identity politics for powerful identities (organizing as an identity isn’t bad when it’s the vulnerable, there’s a huge difference between the deaf organizing as the deaf and the hearing organizing as the hearing). It proposes simplistic and contradictory narratives that point towards destruction rather than construction, towards hate rather than love, and towards selfishness rather than empathy. It’s the worst aspects of human nature
Well said.
I give it 2 years depending on if he wants to keep his job or not and how little he thinks his soul is worth
He’s long, long past any sentimentality about his “soul”. Musk is insane, but Zuckerberg is calculating. He wouldn’t show up on stage doing a salute unless he knows he stands to gain.
Exactly. I’m saying if Trump makes the guy and the other billionaires do it and he wants to keep his job, he might do it.
There’s some thriller book around the collapse of the US power grid that had a Zuck in it, he pre-replaced all his teeth with ceramic (I think?) so he’d never need a dentist. Had a bunker built off-book twice underground with food, supplies, security.
I assume this Zuck is that Zuck (6 months from now, with our current timeline speed.)
That Zuck died pretty quick, hilariously. Terrible people never win in the end, and they’re always alone.
It’s not because a fiction book on the human condition is right, it’s because when it comes right down to it, survival of the fittest kicks in, and no being in the universe would pick a piece of garbage as the winning choice.
The mistake these oligarchs always make, is that they think the “alpha male” in a pack chose his role because he was greedy and powerful. In reality, the alpha male was chosen by the pack, because he was the best chance of the pack’s survival.
These people need the libertarian myth of the alpha male/ubermensch because otherwise, they’d have to face the fact the their success is really from inheritance and luck. Hard work and intelligence doesn’t take you very far when, statistically, your boss is a sociopath.
Ceramic teeth don’t prevent gum disease…
I think a lot ot these tech bros bear a great irony to the concept of survival of the fittest. They were absolutely the fittest to a period of the early 21st century where a middle class kid with enough brains and work ethic in the right place with the right idea and no ethics or hesitation could become incredibly wealthy and powerful. But they created a collapse or merely drastically amplified one that was coming instead of trying to prevent it. Or maybe even they are trying, but the traits that allowed them to rise to power made them unable to actually help.
But regardless, they cannot function in lean times. They’re the socioeconomic equivalent to hypercarnivores. It’s a great position when times are good for it, but it’s not a stable one. In lean times the fittest species are often small omnivorous scavengers who don’t use too much energy to sustain themselves
Just leave Instagram. The quickest way to get rid of a stalking “president”.
At this point one should ask if they are trying to make people quit meta on purpose.
Honestly makes me wonder the same. They might be trying to make it a more effective echo chamber
“Some people…” most people I know have been forced to follow POTUS or VP and cannot unfollow. Finally got my wife to delete her accounts
That sounds like a major liability. Think of the hospital bills for all the eye bleaching related injuries if Donnie started posting beach pics…
It would probably work if they just deleted their accounts.
Obviously, fuck Meta, but…
“People were not made to automatically follow any of the official Facebook or Instagram accounts for the President, Vice President or First Lady,” he wrote on Threads. “Those accounts are managed by the White House so with a new administration, the content on those Pages changes.
“This is the same procedure we followed during the last presidential transition. It may take some time for follow and unfollow requests to go through as these accounts change hands.”
That sounds like a plausible explanation. If you followed when Biden was president, that same account is now Trump’s.
Which means there are likely millions of users either unfollowing or following the account since Monday. I’d be surprised if anyone wanted to hear from both Biden and now trump.
I couldn’t find an actual article, but here’s people complaining about Instagram doing the same thing four years ago:
Old.reddit.com/r/Instagram/comments/l1y2je/unfollowed_and_blocked_the_white_house_account/
Hell, 4 years ago Biden was bitching that Twitter didn’t do this
https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/22/politics/biden-twitter-white-house-accounts/index.html
I have heard from at least one person who deliberately unfollowed before Monday who suddenly was following again after the changeover. Maybe there’s technical difficulties there, but it’s a bad look for sure.
There’s just nothing to gain from intentional fuckery tho, and a very plausible reason.
Even if they “unfollowed” it might not have stuck and if they refreshed it still would have been there.
Things changing on the GUI but not where it actually matters is literally the issue here…
So I 100% believe a bunch of people experienced what you’re saying.
They’re just confusing client side GUI with server side database.
I definitely would consider currying favor with the incoming administration a potential gain, which is why even if this is truly a technical error, so many people would believe otherwise considering the messaging from Meta these past few weeks. Regardless of intentions, Meta has failed in their user experience at a time when many people are evaluating if these platforms are worth the trouble- purely as a tech business that seems like quite the misstep. Of course, the truth is that it doesn’t matter, we already know Meta is bowing to right wing pressure and actively choosing to allow harm to LGBTQ+, women, and other minorities on their platforms, and they shouldn’t get plausible deniability for their mistakes.
so many people would believe otherwise
Just like they did four years ago when the same thing happened…
Trump and his cronies are gonna try and use social media like Hitler used the radio. He want his voice in the homes of every
GermanAmerican.Yep. If you control the biggest source(s) of information, then people eventually will only know what you want them to know.
He want his voice in the homes of every American.
Long ago I started changing the channel whenever Traitorapist Trump was on TV. I don’t want to see or listen to a pedophile talking. I can always listen to someone later on summarizing how many lies Trump told.
Just kill the account then
False! Everyone can unfollow. There’s just a few more steps to delete your account. I was able to do it without issue.
This is so fucked up. Why anyone would use meta now is beyond me
Sounds like a good reason to abandon instagram.
If anyone still needs a reason, they’re probably there to stay.
