On January 7, 2025, Meta announced sweeping changes to its content moderation policies, including the end of third-party fact-checking in the U.S., and rollbacks to its hate speech policy globally that remove protections for women, people of color, trans people, and more. In the absence of data from Meta, we decided to go straight to users to assess if and how harmful content is manifesting on Meta platforms in the wake of January rollbacks.
Best thing I’ve done: delete Facebook/Meta. It was very difficult because you kept coming back… Think I “deleted” 20 times and still crawled back to login. Yeh…
So I came up with a plan to purposely delete and lock myself out of it.
This was like 5 yrs ago, I didnt have much uploaded photos so the process was easy. First, I changed the email on Facebook/Meta to a temporary one. Then I went further to use some random password create a new password.
Then I deleted the account with that temporary email and random password and closed the browser. Finally, I nuked my entire OS and reinstall a new one, just in case if the cache contains data about the email and password.
The headline confuses me. Has Facebook ever done something else?
Historically ('10s era) they were very focused on being “family friendly” and censoring anything they considered violent, sexual, perverse, deliberately deceptive, or otherwise upsetting to your middle-aged middle-income housewife/grandma.
Post-COVID, Zuckerberg’s been increasingly blackpilled, with an eye towards shock-jock engagement bait over any kind of civil moderation, fact-checking of misinformation, or discouragement of fraud/scam posts. So a site plenty of users have historically complained about feeling cloistered and sterile in the Disney-fied sense is now a total madhouse of AI slop, bum-fights clips, drop-shipper spam, and bargain basement rumor-mongering.
We’ve gone from a space that’s Mormon-style conservative to Fight Club-coded conservative.
Ok, but there had been plenty of criticism before that, specifically how readily the algorithm funnels the user into alt-right echo chambers.
And now it’s much worse.
That was more YouTube than Facebook.
The accusations are leveled at all social media.
Different applications employ different strategies for sifting content.
Facebook (and Google) pivoting to pure engagement bait was a more recent development, closer to 2018+, and synced up with their AI obsessions.
Social Media needs to die
Said that on Social Media
Corporate-run social media needs to die.
The internet was made for FTPs. That’s it. If you aren’t transferring files, you are using the internet wrong.
No shit.
The ones who have hate in their hearts can now shows us all their true colors.
That’s a good thing in my eyes. Let them show us exactly who they are.
That nerdy guy who wants to be an MMF fighter sure is angry, you can tell by his business.
Tbf, having a central authority dictate the truth to you ain’t so great.
Neither is having classes of people who you aren’t allowed to offend.
Meta is the enemy of all of mankind
Social Media in general is our most self-destructive invention yet
Delete. It.
My #$%^ HOA only socializes through FB groups. Been trying to drum up interest in a defederated Frendica or something, but can’t get any traction :( I’ve unliked all the stuff and unfollowed everything else, but I can’t GTFO of it any further without being unable to deal with my neighbors civilly
”Oh yeah, uh, they blocked my account. No idea why, just something they do sometimes.”
Your HOA?
Sounds like you add by subtraction twice by deleting Facebook.
Abandon civility, throw tomahawk instead. Your reputation will precede you. Their fear of you will bring about civility. You got this.
“Honey, We got a letter from the HOA, they’ve revoked our pool privileges, you wouldn’t know anything about that you’d you?”
[insert Krumbobulous Michael here I go killing again meme]
To me, this is like saying, “4chan has turned into a cesspool!” Yeah: It was like that from the start. YOU were the ones that assumed it was ever safe!
You’re posting stuff on the public Internet to a website for adults where literally anyone can sign up and comment FFS.
If you want good moderation you need community moderation from people in that community. Not some giant/evil megacorp!
There’s all sorts of tools and platforms that do this properly, easily, and for free. If you don’t like Meta’s websites move off of them already!
People in the community with special power and anonymity. No. That doesn’t work either.
Leave that website.
There is no fixing it.
Happy cake day 🍑
🤝
I do wonder, are seeing more hate, more fear and less freedom because there is more hate, more fear and less freedom, or are we seeing these things because they are now no longer deleted, and there is the same amount of it?
Either way there is no fix for facebook and other facebook owned platforms. Get rid of this shit.
Honestly, probably both. The fact that stuff isn’t being deleted anymore and that they make carve-outs in the rules for hate against specific minorities would embolden people to post more hateful content.
This headline is garbage. You could put just about any Fortune 500 company’s name in there and the headline would still be accurate.
the url too. meta was never safe, and was never intended to be safe. the only way to make it safe is to shut it down.
why should anyone want it to be safe?
Facebook: makes a system where the only way to get engagement is to hatepost.
People on facebook: hateposts
People: “How could this happen?”
How about… stop using META?
I think most of us, here, have. It really is mostly old folks and idiots left now.
Someone mentioned here, their hoa uses fb as their digital square, and my park union does too. I just don’t get to get involved with the park union, Facebook unfortunately, has become ingrained in many community oriented organizations. I hate it. I refuse to go back there.
I don’t understand why people are ao eager to give their money and privacy to billionaires.
Instagram is also Meta. Do the young 'uns still use that?
