Meta to get rid of factcheckers and recommend more political content (FB, Insta, Threads)

[Lorca]

Me and my partner just closed our facebook as part of a wider purge of unneccessary online stuff - marketing emails, ebay and some youtube content which is often just a glorified advert as well, all gone. I'm into hiking/backpacking and i've just been bombarded over xmas with a stream of emails screaming SALE SALE SALE!!!! My partner is similarly harassed by boots chemist and various clothing stores. It's shite, it's overwhelming all this stuff, I don't need it and i can live quite happily without it, besides which i'm totally skint as usual and my loft is just full of stuff we've accumulated over the years.

Honestly, having a good digital purge has been sooo refreshing, i currently feel light as a feather, like i'm naked, tiptoe dancing and twirling gaily through a field of summer flowers, a gentle breeze caressing my jacksie! I can recommend it!

 

[moochedit]

I don't know if the change has happened yet, but this morning FB was suggesting a Fox News page to me .

No thanks

When posts from zuckerberg quoting tommy robinson with "interesting" appear at the top of your "news" feed you know it's live.

(Joke - i hope )

 

[editor]

So Meta gave a $1m to Trump but nothing to Biden:

CBS News reported in December 2024 about tech leaders and companies planning to donate to Trump's inaugural fund, including a $1 million payment from Meta. A MarketWatch report from January 2021 published similar information about tech-sector donations to President Joe Biden's inauguration. The report did not mention Meta, nor did the company's name appear in a list published on Biden's inaugural fund website.

Meta Axed Policy That Prohibits Comparing Women to 'Household Objects.' Here's What Else Changed

The tech giant implemented major updates to its hateful-conduct policies on Jan. 7, 2025 — the same day it ended its U.S. fact-checking program.

www.snopes.com

 

[mwgdrwg]

When is Urban 75 going to block direct posts from X and Meta?

 

[editor]

When is Urban 75 going to block direct posts from X and Meta?

There is already another discussion thread on this topic.

 

[two sheds]

When people leave something like Facebook do they not message people they want to stay in contact with using something like "right I'm off now people, please message me with your email address so I can keep in contact"?

 

[ska invita]

When people leave something like Facebook do they not message people they want to stay in contact with using something like "right I'm off now people, please message me with your email address so I can keep in contact"?

surely no one chats over email. might as well send letters

 

[mwgdrwg]

Me and my partner just closed our facebook as part of a wider purge of unneccessary online stuff - marketing emails, ebay and some youtube content which is often just a glorified advert as well, all gone. I'm into hiking/backpacking and i've just been bombarded over xmas with a stream of emails screaming SALE SALE SALE!!!! My partner is similarly harassed by boots chemist and various clothing stores. It's shite, it's overwhelming all this stuff, I don't need it and i can live quite happily without it, besides which i'm totally skint as usual and my loft is just full of stuff we've accumulated over the years.

Honestly, having a good digital purge has been sooo refreshing, i currently feel light as a feather, like i'm naked, tiptoe dancing and twirling gaily through a field of summer flowers, a gentle breeze caressing my jacksie! I can recommend it!

I think I need to have a digital purge too.

 

[BigMoaner]

Thing is all this right wing shite that meta and x are courting is a total simulation, a storm created by profit margins.

back in the days when facebook and Twitter operated as viable and fairly sensible social media platforms, there were just as many right wingers as left using them with relative satisfaction, from my observation. my local area groups were full of them. my football pages were full of them. none of them were screaming that they were oppressed 24/7, largely because they didn't feel the need to be racist/sexist cunts all the time.

but here's the thing, the ones who were screaming about it were perfectly free to find another private platform to post their hatred on. no, instead they dressed it up as pc societal control, as they always do.

no one was being suppressed, but the platforms were following their own personal preference to not make them citadels of hatred.

it never was "free speech" argument.

but now the platforms think more money can be made if they appease the nasty hordes, so they are begged to come back in.

i hope that for every bigot who joins, a decent person leaves then they will be back to square one - ha.

 

[two sheds]

surely no one chats over email. might as well send letters

yes - or ask people for phone numbers. I'm not on Facebook or anything though (I dip into BlueSky occasionally and look at reddit), and only really regularly phone about four people. Aside from here I email/send cards to friends at Christmas and birthdays. I'm happy with that for keeping in contact.

 

[skyscraper101]

I find it sad because for the longest time I've been ambivalent about Facebook. For all it's dodgy algorithms and questionable business practices I've found it to be a very useful resource for community based groups. Not just nerdy special interest/music/arts ones but also local neighborhood ones. It's where I find out about local events, get advice from, and help neighbors out, check on local news/gossip back in my home village. The fact it crossed over so well, particularly with the over 50s/60s/70s etc means it works so well for this, as it's captured the widest community in a way that twitter, instagram, snap etc never did.

However, the flipside is it amplifies dodgy right wing/conspiracy views by feeding more and more of the same to people who have expressed even a modicum of interest in something in that area. It feeds the habit of reactionary/gullible people and exacerbates their views, because clicks. And that's hundreds of millions of people. Every single day. Fact checking at least seemed to be a sensible way to address misinformation. Not just the perpetual lying by Trump, but also batshit nonsense like vaccine-conspiracists and such. It feels like a capitulation in the war on truth, because they're too shit scared to take him on. Sad times.

 

[magneze]

Unless people leave these platforms there is no reason for them to change. The network effect that caused most people to join in the first place works in reverse. You do make a difference because it signals to your friends/followers that it isn't ok to be there and that you don't consent to this shit.

 

[lazythursday]

I find it sad because for the longest time I've been ambivalent about Facebook. For all it's dodgy algorithms and questionable business practices I've found it to be a very useful resource for community based groups. Not just nerdy special interest/music/arts ones but also local neighborhood ones. It's where I find out about local events, get advice from, and help neighbors out, check on local news/gossip back in my home village. The fact it crossed over so well, particularly with the over 50s/60s/70s etc means it works so well for this, as it's captured the widest community in a way that twitter, instagram, snap etc never did.

However, the flipside is it amplifies dodgy right wing/conspiracy views by feeding more and more of the same to people who have expressed even a modicum of interest in something in that area. It feeds the habit of reactionary/gullible people and exacerbates their views, because clicks. And that's hundreds of millions of people. Every single day. Fact checking at least seemed to be a sensible way to address misinformation. Not just the perpetual lying by Trump, but also batshit nonsense like vaccine-conspiracists and such. It feels like a capitulation in the war on truth, because they're too shit scared to take him on. Sad times.

I agree on this broadly - facebook has a complete monopoly on local neighbourhood information, and that's both a fantastic resource and a curse, given the way discussions get dominated by angry right wing voices. But as for factchecking - I think this was always only a veneer of action, it had very little implication for lies being spread on your local town facebook group, which have continued unabated.

 

[Mr.Bishie]

When people leave something like Facebook do they not message people they want to stay in contact with using something like "right I'm off now people, please message me with your email address so I can keep in contact"?

I made a post to let friends know I was deleting fb & insta accounts, & also sent a msg to multiple friends & family after deletion for those that may not have seen the post.

 

[BigMoaner]

Me and my partner just closed our facebook as part of a wider purge of unneccessary online stuff - marketing emails, ebay and some youtube content which is often just a glorified advert as well, all gone. I'm into hiking/backpacking and i've just been bombarded over xmas with a stream of emails screaming SALE SALE SALE!!!! My partner is similarly harassed by boots chemist and various clothing stores. It's shite, it's overwhelming all this stuff, I don't need it and i can live quite happily without it, besides which i'm totally skint as usual and my loft is just full of stuff we've accumulated over the years.

Honestly, having a good digital purge has been sooo refreshing, i currently feel light as a feather, like i'm naked, tiptoe dancing and twirling gaily through a field of summer flowers, a gentle breeze caressing my jacksie! I can recommend it!

i recently went on a deep dive into consumerism, from a lot of different critical angles, philosphical, psychological, historical - loads of helpful podcasts. and i found it similarly liberating to free myself up from the need to spend money all the time. there's very few things i actually need, the rest is just capitalist headfuck, creating false desires. at weekends i spend a bit, but i have now got into the groove of spending almost nothing in the week and seeing my savings grow feels far more satisfying than most things i get the urge to buy.

 

[skyscraper101]

I agree on this broadly - facebook has a complete monopoly on local neighbourhood information, and that's both a fantastic resource and a curse, given the way discussions get dominated by angry right wing voices. But as for factchecking - I think this was always only a veneer of action, it had very little implication for lies being spread on your local town facebook group, which have continued unabated.

True, I agree it was doubtless no more than a veneer of action but it seemed at least to be some sort of attempt at reigning in outright lies and dangerous misinformation.

I don't know if 'community notes' are the answer. The fact they could've just retired fact checking on the quiet, but Zuckerberg chose to so publicly declare it 'not a thing' seems to be more about boot-licking Trump than anything.

 

[Rob Ray]

One of the difficult ones with ditching Facebook for outreach-oriented purposes is that, unlike Twitter when it throttled everyone who didn't pay, FB does still seem to offer a particularly high throughput. Even in Freedom's case - and we got a particular buzzcut on likes/shares when they went after politics and news - it remains the single biggest source of references other than direct searches. This is for the last 90 days:

Which would make dropping it entirely something that damages us far more than them. I tend to be pragmatic when it comes to social media - we won't use the master's tools to dismantle the master's house, but surreptitiously loosening a few nuts is sometimes still doable - so I don't think I'll be recommending we shut down our pages and groups and such just yet. But I'll be keeping an eye on the graphs for the moment when benefits =/= effort.

 

[Rob Ray]

I don't know if 'community notes' are the answer.

They're little more than an attempt to wikify getting themselves off the legal hook so they don't have to pay people.

 

[HeAthen]

yes - or ask people for phone numbers. I'm not on Facebook or anything though (I dip into BlueSky occasionally and look at reddit), and only really regularly phone about four people. Aside from here I email/send cards to friends at Christmas and birthdays. I'm happy with that for keeping in contact.

For me, FB is the ideal platform for keeping in touch with loads of people. Friends, family (including elderly parents in their 80s) plus I use it for the support group for the charity I'm involved with being the main ones. It'd be a very difficult platform to leave.

 

[two sheds]

there's just me and my sis so no problems there for me:

 

[editor]

One of the difficult ones with ditching Facebook for outreach-oriented purposes is that, unlike Twitter when it throttled everyone who didn't pay, FB does still seem to offer a particularly high throughput. Even in Freedom's case - and we got a particular buzzcut on likes/shares when they went after politics and news - it remains the single biggest source of references other than direct searches. This is for the last 90 days:
View attachment 458653
Which would make dropping it entirely something that damages us far more than them. I tend to be pragmatic when it comes to social media - we won't use the master's tools to dismantle the master's house, but surreptitiously loosening a few nuts is sometimes still doable - so I don't think I'll be recommending we shut down our pages and groups and such just yet. But I'll be keeping an eye on the graphs for the moment when benefits =/= effort.

Indeed. Here's the figures for referrers to Brixton Buzz for 7 days:

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

For me, FB is the ideal platform for keeping in touch with loads of people. Friends, family (including elderly parents in their 80s) plus I use it for the support group for the charity I'm involved with being the main ones. It'd be a very difficult platform to leave.

Yeah I think this is the crux of it isn't it. My Mum is on Facebook and there's no way she's going to start using Mastodon, and a lot of her generation are the same. I rarely use it these days tbh as it's pretty much broken but it's hard to get away from entirely.

 

[HeAthen]

there's just me and my sis so no problems there for me:

Yeah, my wife has never bothered with it.

 

[HeAthen]

Yeah I think this is the crux of it isn't it. My Mum is on Facebook and there's no way she's going to start using Mastodon, and a lot of her generation are the same. I rarely use it these days tbh as it's pretty much broken but it's hard to get away from entirely.

Plus, my Mum is in the South of France so I can't just pop in. Makes it easy to share photos etc with her and I can't see her getting on BlueSky either.

I use it a lot for music groups etc too which I'd find difficult to find elsewhere. Other than that it's mainly for taking the piss out of my mates (and them me) which can be fun.

 

[two sheds]

RIP

 

[Jeff Robinson]

RIP

View attachment 458659

Community note: should read "Convicted Pedophile Mark Zuckerberg, Dead at 40."

 

[Boris Sprinkler]

That’s helpful.

Now I can see the info I need and less of “Photos of Exeter past and present” with comments like “BACK IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS WHEN YOU COULD PARK ANYWHERE FOR FREE AND THERE WERE NO WOOKEYS”

FTFE