Google searches for how to cancel and delete Facebook, Instagram, and Threads accounts have seen rises in the U.S. since Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg
  • hypnicjerk@lemmy.worldEnglish
    121·
    2 hours ago

    i’m so tired of nothingburger feel good ‘stories’ about search trends

    this really is just reddit lite

  • Teknikal@eviltoast.orgEnglish
    6·
    3 hours ago

    I’ve never had even a single Facebook account, to explain why it’s because the UK police once tried to stitch me up and they kept demanding my Facebook account (presumably to fish) I never had one but they would not let that go.

    Once I got representation that line of questioning ended but holy hell did they seem to put a lot of emphasis on my non existent Facebook account.

    For the curious I was raided due to an anonymous phone (to the mayor’s office) call that claimed I was going to shoot up my workplace or something ridiculous.

    My belief is the police wanted to impress the mayor so they just wouldn’t let it go despite being nonsense until I paid representation to make them behave.

    • jdeath@lemm.eeEnglish
      2·
      3 hours ago

      i worry about (future, AI enhanced) impersonation attempts so I just keep it secure and don’t post anything.

  • Eudocimus@lemm.eeEnglish
    82·
    6 hours ago

    I have no clue why anyone takes this seriously or is concerned about this. I have seen maybe three fact-checks during my lifetime on Facebook. That was a long long time ago. I disagreed with two of them and I am not sure if the third one said anything interesting.

    Is there a population somewhere I am not aware of, who believes everything they see on Facebook, who will now be ruined by this change?

    • Baguette@lemm.eeEnglish
      181·
      3 hours ago

      I dont think fact checking was the main reason, moreso that they decided to allow hate speech (e.g. They’re allowing targetted hate against LGBT groups).

      • hessenjunge@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        3·
        3 hours ago

        Never seen FB disallow fake news or hate speech as long as it is coming from the (extreme) right.

        Either they just stop pretending now or irl somehow get even worse?

        • Baguette@lemm.eeEnglish
          1·
          37 minutes ago

          They censored certain phrases and words, which they plan on no longer enforcing. I agree that they leave hate speech on the platform (reports rarely do anything) but the looser restrictions mean people can post even more hateful content and that paves the way for discrimatory ideologies

    • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      7·
      4 hours ago

      The usual suspects of Gen Boomer and X that first preached to not believe anything on the internet and yet doing exactly that without an external fact check.

      Personally for stuff I don’t really care, I will always say “Allegedly (…)” before stating something a website says. If the stuff is important (to me or a peer) I might look harder into it.

  • TypicalHog@lemm.eeEnglish
    116·
    3 hours ago

    Just look at the Proton situation - there will always be soyflakes who will wanna protest even the smallest things that don’t fit their agenda.

  • nutsack@lemmy.worldEnglish
    136·
    13 hours ago

    he’s replacing it with community notes, which is a good thing. the problem i have with Facebook and Instagram is all the useless junk videos that i didn’t ask for and it keeps showing me

      • Donkter@lemmy.worldEnglish
        21·
        2 hours ago

        Community saw this as a potential note and agreed that it isn’t provably true and doesn’t contribute to the post. Rejected and it won’t be shown.

        If you think this method doesn’t work I have an entire Wikipedia to show you.

    • tempest@lemmy.caEnglish
      7·
      8 hours ago

      Since Facebook market place is the defacto classified now I keep my account around to buy and sell. My feed is full of AI generated images related to anything I search on market place. Right now it is all trucks because I was looking for truck tires.

    • Kalysta@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      2 hours ago

      That’s when I started refusing to use it. I only still have my account because my family refuses to call when shit happens now and only seem to announce it on facebook. So i check it every 6 months.

    • Whateley@lemm.eeEnglish
      10·
      7 hours ago

      I deleted mine shortly thereafter. I tried to convince friends and family to do the same but got accusations of being paranoid or a conspiracy theorist. Jump to now, everyone’s Christmas gifts from them this year was tatty bullshit from Temu that was advertised to them on Facebook and I spend most of my time with them dismantling conspiracy theories and misinformation they picked up from the dumbasses they interact with on that fucking site.

    • UristMcHolland@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      8 hours ago

      I deleted my Facebook account years ago, probably right around 2016. I met a new girl last year and she wanted me to make a Facebook account so she could send me stuff. I relented and made a “new” account using the same email I used back in 2016. Low and behold, Facebook never deleted a fucking thing.

    • Retreaux@lemmy.worldEnglish
      69·
      1 day ago

      It was that combined with the fact that they create shadow profiles for your unborn child when your wife is pregnant. (Found out through FB being allowed to track your browsing history even off the app). That was the final straw right after the Cambridge Analytica issue.

      • kofe@lemmy.worldEnglish
        25·
        1 day ago

        Wait what the bloody fuck? I haven’t heard anything about this. Sounds right up their alley, but what evidence is it based on?

        • Retreaux@lemmy.worldEnglish
          16·
          24 hours ago

          If you look up the practical application of Shadow profiles they have the ability to gather information about non-users, which also includes unborn children in the case of them discovering that the mother is pregnant through whatever web searches that they may be doing even outside of Facebook. The whole science of Shadow profiles used to strengthen the algorithm is incredibly frightening and part of the reason why I left Facebook.

          • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
            1·
            3 hours ago

            I can almost excuse shadow profiles for things like “two people both have X contact in their phone”, but making them for unborn children? Lord have mercy. That’s genuinely crazy. It makes me wonder if it’s something like they just marked someone as pregnant based on searches (weird, but maybe acceptable, idk) and it got taken out of context? Hopefully? Either way it’s icky.

        • ditty@lemm.eeEnglish
          11·
          1 day ago

          I hadn’t heard of this either but here’s an article about Facebook keeping shadow profiles on non-users that references an article from 2012 where Target’s data collection determined a teen girl was pregnant before she told her dad

    • Sabata@ani.socialEnglish
      12·
      1 day ago

      People should have deleted it as soon as their parents figured out how to make an account.

    • RagingRobot@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      24 hours ago

      It would be easier if they didn’t buy other products I already used. I hate that shit so much. I wish companies were all banned from buying other companies. A company should be one thing, not own all the things. It’s hard to choose who you do business with in our country because of this. Even if we all drop these apps today and move to something else they will try to buy that too.

    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.caEnglish
      22·
      1 day ago

      Stayed with FB despite Cambridge because Portal TV.

      I’ll still maintain an account because Portal TV.

      It’s a gorgeous product done wrong by meta and in need of a cloning.

  • kipo@lemm.eeEnglish
    32·
    1 day ago

    According to Google Trends, related searches like “how to delete all photos facebook,” “alternative to facebook,” “how to quit facebook,” “how to delete threads account,” and “how to delete instagram account without logging in” have become breakout searches, with popularity suddenly increasing by over 5,000% compared to previous periods.

    So that is 51 times higher than usual? Am I mathing that correctly?

    I wish stories like this wouldn’t use percentages this way, and reported hard actual numbers to compare against.

    • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
      2·
      3 hours ago

      So true… When I see 100% more, I interpret it as 2x. But somewhere around, idk, maybe 300% I interpret “300% more” as 3x. I know that’s technically not correct, but it’s just where my brain goes. I think a good deal of people just throw around “n% more” and “n% as often” interchangeably without much thought.

      Luckily, the bigger the number the less of a difference between the two which is aligned with my brain using them the same.

      (And obviously, if it’s anything technical where it matters I would get clarification.)

      • Alenalda@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        22 hours ago

        And those are real users too. They are intching closer and close to just being a bot hellscape.

  • Ithorian@lemmy.worldEnglish
    391·
    1 day ago

    We all know that in the end only maybe 1 or 2% max will delete their account

  • ToastySaff@lemmy.worldEnglish
    831·
    1 day ago

    He’s getting very Trumpy with the orange tint and pale skin around the eyes.

  • DocumentingReality@lemmy.cafeEnglish
    221·
    1 day ago

    I posted that article on Mastodon. So, yeah…

    I hope more people will find that these open source social media sites are much better run. As well, as a much better platform than Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc.

    Although, I do miss Myspace. The old platform.

    I deactivated my Twitter and Facebook accounts weeks ago. I have my friends and family “moved over” to Friendica. They seem to like it so far. I have even posted (on Friendica) a few links of other open source social sites for them to check out.

  • Kongar@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    267·
    1 day ago

    Will never happen. Those platforms literally push addiction. It’s why the fediverse won’t ever compete imo - there’s no dopamine hit here of likes, # of friends, send a snap right now (or whatever they are called), streaks, etc.

    • theangryseal@lemmy.worldEnglish
      23·
      1 day ago

      I get it. I left Facebook when they changed the feed like a thousand years ago and I haven’t missed it.

      My wife is definitely addicted though. She left it for a year, went back just to check in on family after a friend of hers had a baby and she didn’t know about it. She hasn’t put it down since.

      She’s a very family oriented person and everyone is on Facebook. Their family is the type to wake up first thing in the morning and start calling each other.

      Within minutes of being up, “Ok kids let’s talk to mamaw. Let’s talk to aunty. Now we’re calling great grandma!” Cousins, aunts, uncles, everybody. They’re always talking.

      My family is tight like if something goes wrong, but we don’t talk much otherwise. Sister needs help with a bill, someone’s car breaks down, blah blah blah. We can count on each other, just not to talk.

      I get why it means so much to her and why it’s been easier for me. I’ll know my cousin had a kid when I bump into her with it at the grocery store. That’s good enough for my people. :p

    • affiliate@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      1 day ago

      i agree with what you’re saying and i think we’re mostly on the same page here. i just felt it would be worth saying that, from my perspective, the point of the fediverse isn’t to compete with those websites but instead to be an alternative to them. it’s to offer a picture of what social media can be like without dark patterns, extreme surveillance, and constant enshittification. and there is a really comfort in that. it feels really nice to not have to worry about a website or app getting worse every time i use it.

      i also feel like the people on here tend to behave more thoughtfully (in general) than people on reddit and other for profit social media websites. and it wouldn’t surprise me if that was in part due to the absence of dark patterns making lemmy feel more relaxed and less high stakes. there’s also a bit of a small town feeling on this website that i kind of like too.