this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2025
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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.

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[–] Greg@lemmy.ca 46 points 6 days ago (5 children)

I don’t want to get my hopes up but is this Facebook’s MySpace moment?

[–] Scrollone@feddit.it 39 points 6 days ago

My personal MySpace moment for Facebook was 10 years ago. Best choice ever made.

[–] Lumidaub@feddit.org 20 points 6 days ago

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).

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 14 points 6 days ago

Nobody left MySpace because of enshitification

[–] leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 6 days ago

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.

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[–] perishthethought@lemm.ee 42 points 6 days ago (9 children)

Why don't stories like this EVER mention Lemmy?

[–] OneTwoThree@mander.xyz 55 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Well, I get that Lemmy is an alternative social media, but it's not really an alternative to Facebook. Anonymous usernames, text-based posts, you can't follow people, Fediverse is somewhat confusing.. I'd recommend it as an alternative to Reddit, but probably not the website where boomers want to check up on their neighbors and friends

[–] jagermo@feddit.org 23 points 6 days ago

you can't follow people

Challenge accepted

[–] tal@lemmy.today 6 points 6 days ago

you can’t follow people

He said "Lemmy" but probably meant "Threadiverse", and mbin does support both the Twitter-style following user model and the Reddit-style forum model.

To use fedia.io as an example:

https://fedia.io/people

I dunno about piefed, haven't used it.

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 12 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Because Lemmy is nowhere near as ready for primetime as other platforms.

[–] blind3rdeye@lemm.ee 8 points 6 days ago (3 children)

I reckon Lemmy is actually pretty good. I wouldn't know if the mobile apps are good, because I don't use those - but for me the core functionality of Lemmy on my computer is smooth and functional. I don't see any obvious low-hanging-fruit.

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[–] whydudothatdrcrane@lemmy.ml 11 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Clean cut kids do not find Lemmy very palatable.

[–] doingthestuff@lemy.lol 11 points 6 days ago (2 children)

I don't find Lemmy very palatable. I'm still here because I like to hear different perspectives. Lemmy as a whole seems to hate different perspectives, it's like many go out of their way to keep it closer to a hive mind. 80% of the world's people would not fit in here. I don't either, but I don't give a shit.

[–] lena@gregtech.eu 12 points 6 days ago

Let's hear your different perspectives

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[–] auraithx@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 6 days ago

Not as many grassroots advocates. Even on the Reddit alternative sub the consensus isn’t lemmy somehow.

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[–] lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 37 points 6 days ago (1 children)

John Oliver's show is doing amazing things, including the Drumpfinator addon.

What is that URL, though? I'm guessing I'm know it if I (happily) watch the episode?

[–] fushuan@lemm.ee 15 points 6 days ago (1 children)

it's an inside joke of the show where he presents himself as a """secret""" furry that loves rat erotica. The content of the link is legit though.

[–] SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 6 days ago (1 children)

with the sometimes quite insider-y references, there absolutely is at least one furry on the writing team

[–] fushuan@lemm.ee 8 points 6 days ago

Oh, absolutely! That's maybe why the jokes feel so pure and not disrespectful.

[–] morgunkorn@discuss.tchncs.de 31 points 6 days ago (2 children)

good initiative but uh what's up with that domain name?

[–] towelie@lemm.ee 10 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

His team over at Last Week Tonight pull lots of funny stunts like this and have made quite a few hilarious websites. I wouldn't be surprised if this one is featured on the next episode!

Edit: Hey look, it was! https://www.youtube.com/embed/nf7XHR3EVHo

[–] whydudothatdrcrane@lemmy.ml 10 points 6 days ago

Remember "Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption"? You can't get stuff like this in stores!

[–] whydudothatdrcrane@lemmy.ml 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I think is some in-joke having to do with Facebook moderation. Or his typical goofassery with domain names. Can't help you there.

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 12 points 6 days ago

It's an in joke referencing some stuff he did in a previous season. I don't think there's any specific connection to Facebook.

[–] Corgana@startrek.website 27 points 6 days ago

Took a long time, but nice to see this topic getting mainstream attention.

[–] Sunny@slrpnk.net 25 points 6 days ago

John Oliver for president ✊

[–] grid11@lemy.nl 24 points 6 days ago
[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 11 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (3 children)

i like that people are leaving zucc platforms but why is that happening suddenly? did he do something exceedingly fascist? did i miss something?

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 19 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

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

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (4 children)

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.

[–] EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

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.

[–] datavoid@lemmy.ml 6 points 6 days ago

This is the first time zuck has gone full ass-kisser with curly hair and a gold chain, though

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[–] whydudothatdrcrane@lemmy.ml 7 points 6 days ago

He only now was able to catch up with all the news with Meta moderation from a month ago. He is only a couple weeks back on air.

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 4 points 6 days ago

Meta declared hate speech is free speech. Lgbt folks and allies started leaving in droves

[–] ddash@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

The site doesn't suggest any alternatives though or am I not seeing that?

[–] whydudothatdrcrane@lemmy.ml 16 points 6 days ago

The alternatives were suggested briefly in the segment, not the site. Oliver pointed to the site those people who can't ditch Meta right now.

[–] hddsx@lemmy.ca 5 points 6 days ago (8 children)

I’ve been wanting to try pixelfed but I haven’t figured out what to do: start my own for friends or join an existing one.

I heard there were some issues with a dev or something so I haven’t signed up for the original instance yet

[–] skribe@aussie.zone 6 points 6 days ago

Try one of the existing instances. Pixelfed.social is probably a bad choice right now, as it's getting overloaded with new members and so importing from Instagram has been curtailed. The others at https://pixelfed.org/servers should be fine. If you later choose to host your own instance you can always move the data from your old one.

[–] perishthethought@lemm.ee 5 points 6 days ago

I love the instance I'm on and it's fairly quiet. Come on in!

https://pixtagram.social/

[–] glitchead@programming.dev 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

I use https://metapixl.com as mine. Its active and reliable. Also, not having influencers polluting the timeline makes all of Pixelfed a really nice experience.

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[–] leisesprecher@feddit.org 5 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Why not just recommend adblockers? No ads, no revenue, no matter how much tracking.

[–] ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 points 6 days ago

Selling user profiling data is also worth money, even if you're not shown ads because of ad-blockers you bring value to the dataset by increasing it's size with useful demographic data.

[–] scytale@lemm.ee 4 points 6 days ago

It looks like they got that list of tips from the EFF, who created Privacy Badger. So it’s not surprising they only recommended theirs. I agree though that they should include uBO in the list.

[–] Mangoholic@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Correct me if wrong, but isn't there a law in the us that says, all us companies have to give the government access to all data without disclosing this information? That would rule out any us based companies for privacy concerns as alternatives atm.

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 5 points 5 days ago

You should expect any data hosted on a server to be accessible by the given government…and thanks to NSA you should expect any data that travels through the US to be accessible by their government

Privacy in this case is around the selling to advertisers

[–] Routhinator@startrek.website 3 points 5 days ago

The problem I see with this is that a Meta employee literally came out on Mastodon recently and revealed that non of these settings do anything and are false flags.

https://misskey.de/notes/a3ax4tqomg

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