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.
Zuckerberg hung out with Trump at Mar a Lago and attended the inauguration, then got rid of Facebook and Instagram’s fact checking, relaxed their rules on posting hate speech and discrimination, ended Meta’s diversity initiatives, removed bathroom facilities at meta for transgender and nonbinary employees, made speeches in defence of Trump and expressed gratitude for finally being able to have “a productive partnership with the United States government”, while removing communications channels for employees and threatening them with being fired if they talked to media about any of this. He has gone full MAGA.
This article covers some of it: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/technology/mark-zuckerberg-meta-trump.html
thats par for the course for facebook, no? they have always helped the fascists, in my country they literally helped elect one. they helped spread misinformation as if they already didnt care, and the diversity stuff feels just about the same brand of fake to me, so much hate in there.
beggars cant be choosers though so i guess im just glad people are actually mad this time.
They’ve gone full mask off, which is why there’s the sudden backlash. The hate speech rules now include a section that explicitly says that it’s okay to call LGBTQ people mentally ill. They’re the only group with a specific carve-out in the rules saying that it’s okay to post hate speech about them.
This is the first time zuck has gone full ass-kisser with curly hair and a gold chain, though
Huh? Source? What country?
brazil. it was a cambridge analytica sort of deal, where the bad guys paid facebook to milimetrically target fascist propaganda, antivax sentiment, and a bunch of other bullshit on vulnerable people.
they were happy to oblige and even interfered when we tried to regulate this away, a few years later. i hear they abuse it even further on SE asia.
google did different but similarly heinous garbage to us.
edit: you might have a hard time finding it through all of bolsonaro’s accusations because hes a piece of shit who laid a lot of it too, but you might find something about the “milicias digitais” or how the far right has been paying off social media to be favoured in searches and recommendations.