John Oliver launches "Make yourself less valuable to Meta" website, suggests Signal, Mastodon, Pixelfed, and BlueSky as Meta alternatives
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"Normal" people don't use Facebook through the browser. Heck, I know functional, working adults 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.
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He decided to kiss the ring. People don't like that.
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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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I don’t want to get my hopes up but is this Facebook’s MySpace 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.
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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.
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
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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.
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one can always delete their accounts
As if Meta actually deletes anything
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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
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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.
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I don’t want to get my hopes up but is this Facebook’s MySpace moment?
There's literally billions of people on Facebook, so probably not. But maybe it's a start.
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I don’t want to get my hopes up but is this Facebook’s MySpace moment?
Nobody left MySpace because of enshitification
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Why not just recommend adblockers? No ads, no revenue, no matter how much tracking.
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.
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I don’t want to get my hopes up but is this Facebook’s MySpace moment?
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).
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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
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.
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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.
Fucken hilarious
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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
I love the instance I'm on and it's fairly quiet. Come on in!
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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.
Why don't stories like this EVER mention Lemmy?
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Why don't stories like this EVER mention Lemmy?
Clean cut kids do not find Lemmy very palatable.
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I don’t want to get my hopes up but is this Facebook’s MySpace 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.
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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
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.
