John Oliver launches "Make yourself less valuable to Meta" website, suggests Signal, Mastodon, Pixelfed, and BlueSky as Meta alternatives
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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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P [email protected] shared this topic
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good initiative but uh what's up with that domain name?
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I think is some in-joke having to do with Facebook moderation. Or his typical goofassery with domain names. Can't help you there.
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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.
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Oh, he just had that lying around
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sentence I never thought I’d write
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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
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They'll just bury the settings, or remove them. Who's going to stop them now?
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I guess that's what the alts are for
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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!
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i like that people are leaving zucc platforms but why is that happening suddenly? did he do something exceedingly fascist again? did i miss something?
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Why not just recommend adblockers? No ads, no revenue, no matter how much tracking.
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Remember "Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption"? You can't get stuff like this in stores!
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one can always delete their accounts
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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.
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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.
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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)
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Nice! Just shared this (as a PDF without the domain name lol) with my family!
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it’s going to hurt Meta’s bottom
lineeventuallyJust hurting Meta's bottom is good enough for me
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Not easy for most users on app-based mobile/tablet devices.
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(Puts on tinfoil hat) His parent company, Discovery-Warner Bros, probably wouldn't like that? And John Oliver makes his living through ad revenue.
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