this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2025
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Privacy

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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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[–] SomeAmateur@sh.itjust.works 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

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

[–] whydudothatdrcrane@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 years ago

it’s going to hurt Meta’s bottom ~~line~~ eventually

Just hurting Meta's bottom is good enough for me

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

They'll just bury the settings, or remove them. Who's going to stop them now?

[–] androidul@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

one can always delete their accounts

[–] ryper@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 years ago

As if Meta actually deletes anything

[–] Greg@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

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

[–] Scrollone@feddit.it 3 points 2 years ago

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

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 1 points 2 years ago

Nobody left MySpace because of enshitification

[–] lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 3 points 2 years 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?

[–] morgunkorn@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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

[–] honeybadger1417@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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.

[–] whydudothatdrcrane@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

sentence I never thought I’d write

🤣 🤣

[–] perishthethought@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Why don't stories like this EVER mention Lemmy?

[–] OneTwoThree@mander.xyz 4 points 2 years 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 3 points 2 years ago

you can't follow people

Challenge accepted

[–] tal@lemmy.today 1 points 2 years 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.

[–] DMCMNFIBFFF@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

I guess the hate for Reddit isn't as great as for Shitter and Fakebook. (yet)

[–] whydudothatdrcrane@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Clean cut kids do not find Lemmy very palatable.

[–] doingthestuff@lemy.lol 1 points 2 years ago

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.

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 1 points 2 years ago

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

[–] grid11@lemy.nl 1 points 2 years ago
[–] Corgana@startrek.website 1 points 2 years ago

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

[–] subtext@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Nice! Just shared this (as a PDF without the domain name lol) with my family!

[–] philycheeze@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] subtext@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Hey it’s a group chat with my grandma ಠ_ಠ

[–] pupbiru@aussie.zone 1 points 2 years ago

and now you’ve robbed her of her chance to sell john oliver her collection of valuable rat erotica

[–] CAVOK@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Use Magic Earth or Organic Maps instead of Google Maps too. Neither will track you.

[–] Dreaming_Novaling@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Organic Maps is fantastic except for one crucial thing. Traffic info. That is literally the only thing stopping me from using it instead of GM or Waze. I need traffic info, I don't want to be late to stuff because I didn't know an accident happened, or a road got flooded, or there's just high volume traffic, etc.

I'm not sure how they would implement it and keep everything relatively privacy friendly (well it's FOSS so at the very least they aren't selling our data ❤️), but I need it.

[–] CAVOK@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Dreaming_Novaling@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 year ago

Just tried it out yesterday and today, and thought it was pretty good! Compared the routes it showed me with Waze (GM data) and it showed similar/exact routes.

For others who are curious, the only issues I noticed were:

  1. Has a stroke when trying to navigate to my house, seems to think there isn't an exact road next to it, meanwhile organic maps shows and navigates to it perfectly fine. Seems to struggle with the exact location of a place, especially in a group of buildings.
  2. While navigating, if you tap the directions to see ahead, a bar comes up and shows you. However, when you try to dismiss this panel, it goes blank and stays on the screen.

Other than that, seems great, has all the features Organic Maps does and more. Likely to be my permanent navigator app.

[–] hddsx@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 years 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

[–] toastal@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

For the masses maybe, but Signal & Bluesky ain’t it for a Privacy forum

[–] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

How is Signal not privacy-friendly? It's the most private thing that can be called a "messenger app".

[–] amzd@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

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.)

[–] whydudothatdrcrane@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years 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.

[–] leisesprecher@feddit.org 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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

[–] ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 years 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.

[–] Sunny@slrpnk.net 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

John Oliver for president ✊

[–] Oni_eyes@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 years 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.

[–] ddash@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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

[–] whydudothatdrcrane@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years 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.