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.
You must log in or register to comment.
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.
Took a long time, but nice to see this topic getting mainstream attention.
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?
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.
with the sometimes quite insider-y references, there absolutely is at least one furry on the writing team
mildly NSFW?
My app. Connect for Lemmy on android, switches between hidden text/visible text. I cannot click on the link.
This is one of the reasons Lemmy is not ready.
Just imagine being a artist, doing furry because you love it or maybe just because it pays your bills. And then someone from HBO contacts you about commissioning a picture of John Oliver as a horny otter in skintight jorts.
😏🤤
Oh, absolutely! That’s maybe why the jokes feel so pure and not disrespectful.
huh
For the masses maybe, but Signal & Bluesky ain’t it for a Privacy forum
How is Signal not privacy-friendly? It’s the most private thing that can be called a “messenger app”.
The most private thing for messenger app are the messenger applications using the XMPP protocol.
I think the main red flag is that they are spending so much money. In 2023 they had 55m monthly active users and they spent $35m. The casual WhatsApp user that might switch to Signal is definitely not gonna pay for this so either Signal fans have to donate more or Signal has to start finding other monetization which if we look at other companies means selling private data.
(Also, half their spending is on hosting and they are not self hosting so a donation to Signal is basically a donation to Amazon and Google.)
Signal doesn’t have private data to sell; that’s the whole point.
And my point is that since their costs are so high they will either have to become a paid app or start collecting data to sell. Or become more efficient but you’d think if they knew how they’d already done that.
either Signal fans have to donate more or Signal has to start finding other monetization which if we look at other companies means selling private data.
Lo and behold, after RiseUp now Signal is accused of selling data. Well, it is well known (and audited) that Signal keeps so little metadata it is not even useful to the authorities that have subpoeana-ed it.
This is an extra-ordinary claim you have to back with extra-ordinary evidence, in order to save face.
Where did I accuse them of selling data right now? I’m simply noting the risk that they will have to cover the insane costs of their inefficient infrastructure through either becoming a paid app or collecting data to sell.
John Oliver for president ✊
He can’t because he wasn’t born here, but we could totally elect his wife and let him do the whole first husband thing while still advising if she needs it.
Yep after all that’s how musk did it by using trump as the symbolic figurehead
He should have offered the motor coach to Trump instead
You do know his wife is a Republican right? A proud Bush/Obama era Republican? They literally met at the GOP convention in 2008.
What is with liberals and playing fantasy games with politics? On the one hand liberals will say elections are important and have consequences and on the other they’ll treat it like a game of putting in your celebrity faves without bothering to care about their actual views.
Who knows what Jon himself actually thinks given he married a proud Republican and the fact he’s a TV comedian playing a character. For all you know deep down he could personally be a never-Trump Republican himself.
She isn’t a Republican based on the last 30 seconds…
All I was doing was correcting a misconception and giving the actual path to what they wanted.
Nowhere did I say it was good or bad or whether I supported it.
Please take your words out of my mouth and keep them in yours.
President Kate Norley and First Gentleman John Oliver.
Why don’t stories like this EVER mention Lemmy?
it’s not an alternative to any meta platform
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
you can’t follow people
Challenge accepted
Lol
You can on mbin atleast
That’s what Friendica is for
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:
I dunno about piefed, haven’t used it.
What are the best mbins these days? I’m out of the loop.
I guess the hate for Reddit isn’t as great as for Shitter and Fakebook. (yet)
Because Lemmy is nowhere near as ready for primetime as other platforms.
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.
Boost is great for Android.
Voyager ist amazing
I ditched reddit for Lemmy during the whole API crackdown bs. I’ve only used Voyager, but it seems quite comparable to RIF, which is the only way I ever viewed reddit.
I used RIF, but ended up using Jerboa for some random reason I can’t remember. Will check out Voyager.
Lemmy is good for the size. It took a while for Lemmy to adjust to its current scale, with major instances having uptime issues.
If we keep the servers up, there is still issues with spam and moderation. We don’t have the tools that Reddit built and I expect further pushes towards defederation as the standard for users hasn’t been developed.
I think we’re too weird and niche.
Clean cut kids do not find Lemmy very palatable.
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.
Let’s hear your different perspectives
“People who disagree” saying “things you don’t like” energy
Agree. I am not an open socialist and my top 5 issues probably don’t align with the usual stuff I see at the top of Lemmy communities. Still, it is a worthwhile source for some tech/privacy info and some other niche content.
The tankie bullshit is over blown PR smear.
Some how we manage coexist fine enough.
It’s not just the tankie stuff. Tbf this place at times feels like the far left version of 4chan, and I say that as a very left person. Reddit’s upvote system has always had an issue with brigading/dog piling leading to hostile discussions and echo chambers. In Lemmy, the issue is worse because it feels like most of the people who were drawn here are deeply tied to that culture from Reddit. By contrast, Reddit has a lot more young and innocent people to soften things.
I quit/deleted my Reddit account many years ago, before Lemmy’s rise in popularity. I just come here every once in a while because I like decentralized/fediverse stuff, but the Reddit formula really does turn me off. I can’t imagine the average person having the stomach for this brand of internet discussions, regardless of political leaning. It’s quite hostile and combative.
Idk, to me the comments on lemmy are generally less toxic and I feel like I see way more nuanced discussion than on reddit.
On Lemmy a comment gets a well thought out reply. On Reddit not even a vote.
I am not sure quite sure what point you’re trying to make.
If you people don’t care for social media, opt out
However if you want social media there are two choices
- psyop bot farms running social media opinion shaping and other propaganda campaigns
- uncle Sunzu and tankies going on unhinged rants about capitalism and ruling class abuses.
I think you are saying that most people prefer 1 despite saying they prefer freedom of expression.
If you prefer freedom of expression, you gonna need to hear people duke it out online. That’s what’s a proper discussion means.
If everyone just following what current psyop is, then sure everyone there agree on the talking points and if they don’t get they get censored out.
Not as many grassroots advocates. Even on the Reddit alternative sub the consensus isn’t lemmy somehow.
Lemmy lacks a bit of polish
Yeah but lots of german.
Yes, those too
Not a very large userbase.
This is literally the answer lmao why are you getting downvoted.
Good, glad it’s getting some main stream attention. If more people start taking advantage of these settings and alternatives it’s going to hurt Meta’s bottom line eventually
it’s going to hurt Meta’s bottom
lineeventuallyJust hurting Meta’s bottom is good enough for me
Meta has been quite naughty indeed
They’ll just bury the settings, or remove them. Who’s going to stop them now?
one can always delete their accounts
As if Meta actually deletes anything
Haven’t “shadow” accounts been a thing for years even for people that don’t use meta?
I guess that’s what the alts are for
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.
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).
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.
Nobody left MySpace because of enshitification
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.
Even better. It’s the fediverses Facebook moment.
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.
I’m actually not sure what it is fb offers that people stay on it for. I find that you don’t need it to connect with actual friends. Even just making a Slack for close friends is a far better experience. It’s not great for finding news, it’s terrible for trying to have any sort of discussion. I genuinely don’t understand what purpose it serves.
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.
good initiative but uh what’s up with that domain name?
There was a whole saga of him buying expensive rat erotica artwork at one point, which is a sentence I never thought I’d write.
Is that why my rat erotica artwork started selling at such high prices?
sentence I never thought I’d write
🤣 🤣
rat erotica
aah thank you! now I can make sense of those last jumbled letters, quite the unusual word combination for sure ^^
Newsweek - The True Story Behind ‘Last Week Tonight’s’ Rat Erotica Painting (archive link)
Fucken hilarious 😂👏
Oh, he just had that lying around
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
Remember “Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption”? You can’t get stuff like this in stores!
I think is some in-joke having to do with Facebook moderation. Or his typical goofassery with domain names. Can’t help you there.
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.
i like that people are leaving zucc platforms but why is that happening suddenly? did he do something exceedingly fascist? did i miss something?
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 most 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
my country they literally helped elect one
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 to 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 have fascism be favoured in searches and recommendations throughout the country. oh and they still have plenty of influence because of these garbage apps.
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.
He decided to kiss the ring. People don’t like that.
Meta declared hate speech is free speech. Lgbt folks and allies started leaving in droves
AFAIK no, but it takes awhile for everything to sink in, and hosts like John Oliver only have so much air time.
Nice! Just shared this (as a PDF without the domain name lol) with my family!
Coward!
Hey it’s a group chat with my grandma ಠ_ಠ
and now you’ve robbed her of her chance to sell john oliver her collection of valuable rat erotica
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
My Instagram is full of fitness content (and good looking people tbh). Nothing comes even remotely close on pixelfed. No offence to federated social media, but we all ain’t good looking :) (or suck at using filters…)
It’s still a very long way off from taking over Instagram.
I just do gram.social. works good enough for me and my cannabis account.
I’ve been using pixey.org for a year or so. No complaints
I love the instance I’m on and it’s fairly quiet. Come on in!
I’ve also been intrigued, but it seems like a harder jump to make than mastodon or lemmy. Like with twitter or Reddit I’m mostly interacting with strangers anyway, but I don’t really want my instagram to be photos of people I don’t know.
Would you try to get your friends to make the switch with you?
Yeah, that’s why I’m considering hosting my own, unfederated instance
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.
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.
Are you able to stop your account from federating but subscribe to people who do federate? In other words, is there a way to create a private account
Honestly, I don’t know. I’d suggest reaching out an admin of one of the instances that has the community guidelines that jive best with you. Their contact info is usually on the instance’s home page. They would definitely know.
The site doesn’t suggest any alternatives though or am I not seeing that?
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.
Why not just recommend adblockers? No ads, no revenue, no matter how much tracking.
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.
But the thing is out of the big companies, basically none of them are in the business of selling the data they have. They are much better off if they don’t allow competitors to grow by keeping all the data to themselves.
that’s why the broligarchs are buddying up to the dictators. the bottom is falling out of the surveillance capitalism market for advertising because it was never as effective as the ad marketplace brokers said it was. so the broligarchs need to sell their spying on us service to someone else and they’ve elected for the police state
-
Not easy for most users on app-based mobile/tablet devices.
-
(Puts on tinfoil hat) His parent company, Discovery-Warner Bros, probably wouldn’t like that? And John Oliver makes his living through ad revenue.
Not easy for mobile devices? Firefox-based browsers on mobile can have Ublock Origin :/
“Normal” people don’t use Facebook through the browser. Heck, I know functional, working adults, and reasonably smart kids, that don’t really understand the concept of a browser/URLs and just do everything through apps, bar the bare minimum for work.
Or, even worse, they think that the internet is Google and vice versa.
-
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.
