How to Change Your Meta Settings | Make yourself less valuable to Meta. Brought to you by Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
johnoliverwantsyourraterotica.com

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.

  • SomeAmateur@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    141·
    2 months ago

    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

    • Lumidaub@feddit.org
      27·
      2 months 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).

    • LerajeEnglish
      10·
      2 months 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.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      2 months ago

      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.

      • PrettyFlyForAFatGuy@feddit.uk
        13·
        2 months ago

        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

      • 1SimpleTailor@startrek.websiteEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        Seems like a win tbh. Meta stops influencing people and collecting their data, while dumbass corps waste money on ads nobody will see.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          2 months ago

          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.

      • spooky2092English
        2·
        2 months ago

        *Billions of accounts. Hard to tell how many are real people and how many are just slop throwing bots.

    • danc4498@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      2 months ago

      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.

      • then_three_more@lemmy.world
        3·
        2 months ago

        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)

        • sierramccharlie@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          2 months ago

          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.

      • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
        3·
        2 months ago

        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.

  • Fonzie!@ttrpg.network
    72·
    2 months ago

    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 [he/him]@lemm.eeEnglish
      24·
      2 months ago

      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.

    • OneTwoThree@mander.xyzEnglish
      88·
      2 months ago

      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

      • blind3rdeye@lemm.ee
        11·
        2 months ago

        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.

        • MumboJumbo@lemmy.world
          14·
          2 months ago

          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.

          • Frostbeard@lemmy.world
            2·
            2 months ago

            I used RIF, but ended up using Jerboa for some random reason I can’t remember. Will check out Voyager.

            • doctordevice@lemmy.ca
              1·
              2 months ago

              I think Jerboa was being pitched as the best RiF alternative super early on in the exodus. I also found myself on it but it never clicked for me.

              I was on Connect for a while but there were some things that were a bit harder than they needed to be with different account/instance/filter management. Moved to Voyager and I’m quite happy with it, very smooth experience.

        • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.clubEnglish
          6·
          2 months ago

          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.

      • Zagorath@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        Eh, Lemmy is way more mature as a platform than PixelFed is, and he mentioned that.

        I think the explanation being in relation to what it’s intended to replace is more likely. He doesn’t care as much about getting people off Reddit as he cares about getting people off Zuck and Musk’s platforms.

    • auraithx@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      6·
      2 months ago

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

    • Oni_eyes@sh.itjust.works
      38·
      2 months ago

      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.

      • Majestic@lemmy.ml
        14·
        2 months ago

        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.

  • ☂️-@lemmy.ml
    15·
    2 months ago

    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.caEnglish
      30·
      2 months ago

      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

      • ☂️-@lemmy.ml
        7·
        2 months ago

        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
          8·
          2 months 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.mlEnglish
          6·
          2 months ago

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

          • ☂️-@lemmy.ml
            8·
            2 months ago

            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.

    • OneMeaningManyNames@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      9·
      2 months 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.

    • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
      3·
      2 months ago

      AFAIK no, but it takes awhile for everything to sink in, and hosts like John Oliver only have so much air time.

    • OneMeaningManyNames@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      20·
      2 months 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
    10·
    2 months ago

    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·
      2 months 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.

      • hddsx@lemmy.ca
        1·
        2 months ago

        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

        • dissentiate@programming.devEnglish
          2·
          2 months ago

          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.

    • oldmansbeard@midwest.socialEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      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?

      • hddsx@lemmy.ca
        2·
        2 months ago

        Yeah, that’s why I’m considering hosting my own, unfederated instance

    • Firipu@startrek.website
      1·
      2 months ago

      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.

  • Mangoholic@lemmy.ml
    5·
    2 months ago

    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
      8·
      2 months 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

      • amzd@lemmy.world
        8·
        2 months ago

        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.)

          • amzd@lemmy.world
            4·
            2 months ago

            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.

        • OneMeaningManyNames@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
          9·
          2 months ago

          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.

          • amzd@lemmy.world
            5·
            2 months ago

            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.

      • toastal@lemmy.ml
        2·
        2 months ago

        It is entirely centralized in the US—& there is 100% chance the NSA is tapped in on the metadata they can get a hold of. You can’t self-host. They have been hostile toward alternate clients & are very adamant you use one of the duopoly of Google/Apple mobile OSs as your primary device (screw you if you want to run an alternative OS or no phone I guess). There is a hole in the history for the server that leaves room for conspiracy theories.

        Signal is adequate for privacy-focused normies, but does not deserve the pedestal it is put on which is why many folks more serious about the ideals instead of focusing on making concessions are skeptical of Signal. This isn’t a hot take or new stance.

      • System0@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        The most private thing for messenger app are the messenger applications using the XMPP protocol.