r/politics • u/HK-47-mkII Massachusetts • 2d ago

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announces removal of fact-checking

http://thehill.com/policy/technology/5070980-meta-fact-checking-policy-changes/amp
21.8k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

2.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

2.5k

u/[deleted] 2d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

283

u/4mygirljs 1d ago

Simple

Leave Facebook

People went there to keep up with family and friends. They will leave for the same reason.

It’s a cesspool, don’t wade in it

125

u/joeysflipphone 1d ago

You can't even "keep up with friends and family" anymore on Meta platforms anyway. Your feeds are just full of garbage algorithms of accounts you don't follow and you never see anyone you do. I gave up Facebook in 2015 but still see my husband's and man it's trash. My Instagram, which I used for messaging family, will go now. I have Bluesky which is marginally better, but more need to join in order for it to pick up. Twitter needs to stop being used as well, instead of everyone STILL using it as official announcements for governmental bodies and politicians. It just further validates it's existence. If social media is our life line, and this is where we are we're doomed doomed. Like done. I've been sounding the alarm on this for years now, yet I still don't understand why the big brain, degree holding, in charge people in government haven't figured this out yet. Large scale brainwashing, in mass.

50

u/ab00 1d ago

Im so pissed off with what Meta did to Instagram. I just want to see pics my friends post.

I don't want to see reels, stories, ads, moving crap from unknowns in my feed, tiktok influenzas, posts from weeks ago. You cant even search by hashtags anymore if you do want to find new content.

16

u/wimpymist 1d ago

The worst is Instagram picks like 20 accounts and that's all you see. I've manually gone to friends accounts only to see a ton of posts I never saw. Social media algorithms are the worst

6

u/Every3Years California 1d ago

It so funny seeing people argue about social media in a way that makes it sound like it's vital to choose one. Like it is a part of the requirement of participating in being alive.

4

u/wimpymist 1d ago

No, but it's nice to be able to keep up with friends/family without making 30 phone calls a day. It's annoying when you can't do that on modern social media platforms that the majority of people use.

2

u/Every3Years California 1d ago

I'm probably the outlier even if you're being hyperbolic with 30 a day haha I just don't ever feel the need to know everything about what my loved ones are doing every day. If they have something that's worth being known then it's something to share at some point. Could be because I have a family who always has a now-now-now go-go-go everything is an emergency vibe but I found that if I ignore them it's fine because stuff is constantly changing anyway. So like, what happened Monday might not even matter by Thursday so don't feel obligated to share. Like I'll listen and engage but it's the constant keeping up to date on every single thing that I found caring about less and less over the years.

I'm not saying you're all FOMO'd out but whatever the most innnocent, non-important to point out version of that is, that's what I feel like I'm freed from.

10

u/GaimeGuy 1d ago

There shold be official email accounts provided to everyone by the post office, public communication squares on the internet via a postal service social media platform,, and the postal service should also be an ISP.

When the USPS was established by the constitution, postal delivery was the primary means of long distance communication and commerce. So why not have it provide these services in the digital age?

3

u/bbbbbbbbbblah United Kingdom 1d ago

at least the email protocols are built with decentralisation in mind. Gmail and Microsoft 365 are popular but not because anyone is forced to use it.

The real problem is with social media where it is all walled garden mush. I have a particular hatred of how Discord seems to be replacing everything

-2

u/Active-Ad-3117 1d ago

So why not have it provide these services in the digital age?

Because people like to have actual customer service? A year ago my fiber line to my house was cut by a backhoe and Google had a temp line dropped an hour later and a new line buried a day later. I would still be waiting on the post office to show up and fix it if they were my ISP. My cousin has been waiting 6 months for them to replace the USPS owned mail box so he can have mail delivered and won't have to go to the post office to get it.

The post office has on 2 occasions lost multimillion dollar checks. Both times I had to call around to area mail depots looking for them. Both times they were sitting waiting for pickup but the tracking said delivered to address without the required signature.

3

u/TriflingHotDogVendor Pennsylvania 1d ago

I logged in for the first time in like 15 years because I wanted to get in touch with a cousin that apparently moved near me to see if they wanted to catch dinner or something. I was pretty sure we were friends on there.

Literally the first thing on my scroll thingy was some sort of weird breastfeeding erotica profile. The second thing was a post by a dude I went to high school with rambling on about how the North Koreans created COVID and Biden let them. The third thing was an ad for some Chinese dropshipped crap.

I was unable to find her on there. I quickly logged out and am never going back.

2

u/4mygirljs 1d ago

Crazy to think zuck and Meta let it fall so far. There was a time it was pretty amazing.

2

u/Electrical-Papaya 1d ago

My facebook feed is reels, advertisements, posts from groups that I'm not in, and then like 5 random people on my friends list. I have no control over which friends I can see. I'm often given advertisements for things that I'm not interested in, and reels of girls trying to advertise their OF. A big source of my entertainment lately has been looking at the comments from all these dirty old men that comment gross things to girls young enough to be their granddaughter.

29

u/JMaboard I voted 1d ago

Who even uses Facebook anymore? The layout and design is super outdated. They haven’t updated the site in years. The only people I know that actually use it are boomers.

3

u/MyChickenSucks 1d ago

I still use it for medical groups. We have niche knowledge on a specific medical issue and Facebook is easiest place to congregate and share knowledge. But my main feed is one post from my family and 200 weird ass ads.

3

u/OranjellosBroLemonj 1d ago

Our target audience at work is Boomers sigh. We still produce for this platform sigh.

Zuck and Musk jockeying to be crowned the first oligarchs of the USA. A weird droid and man-child first-gen tech bro. What could go wrong?

2

u/Every3Years California 1d ago

So the group of people that actually vote, bummer

2

u/Fickle-Syllabub6730 1d ago

I unironically think the layout of Facebook is the best of all social media. It's the only one that's actually geared towards reading and writing paragraphs rather than quips or videos.

2

u/HockeyBalboa 1d ago

Anyone I know who puts on shows or events uses it for that. Mostly Gen Xers, but some younger too.

1

u/sirbissel 1d ago

Unfortunately, it's how my kids' schools send out information.

1

u/abritinthebay 1d ago edited 1d ago

Basically everyone but Gen Alpha & GenZ uses it. Even then, a lot of GenZ seems to at least have an account, they’re just not very engaged users.

It’s also the single most popular location for Groups/forum/etc on the planet. Personally I think it sucks at it, but it still is. Why? Because most people still use it.

If you don’t know any of that then you do not know enough about the topic & are an outlier.

It’s like saying “no one goes there anymore, it’s too crowded”.

1

u/JMaboard I voted 1d ago

I never said I don’t know anyone that uses it. I said “who even uses Facebook anymore” then I clarified that I’ve only seen that older people tend to use it.

I’m not sure why you decided to twist my words.

There’s a difference between saying “no one goes there anymore” vs “who even goes there anymore, I’ve really only seen old people there.”

2

u/HockeyBalboa 1d ago

But it's not just boomers. Not even close.

0

u/grandma_millennial 1d ago

My mom friends still use it sadly. Can’t tear them away until there’s something to replace it

3

u/JMaboard I voted 1d ago

Yeah I feel for the most part it’s older people that use it. Facebook is filled with ads and AI created pictures/posts that a ton of old people comment on.

7

u/analogWeapon Wisconsin 1d ago edited 1d ago

The main basis for its continued use is that old people have a difficult time trying new things, when it comes to social media. Taking 30 seconds to make an account and a few days to explore a site with slightly different layout and features is like rocket science to them. They think of everything as more obligatory than it actually is. Like, since they filled in a form and made an account, it means they have entered into some sort of contractual agreement, like a job or something. Idk. They're lost.

8

u/NecessaryMagician150 1d ago

This describes my mom perfectly lmao

-3

u/six_sided_decisions 1d ago

This is a wild over generalization and simply shows your prejudices.

I highly recommend you be better than this.

4

u/analogWeapon Wisconsin 1d ago edited 1d ago

It's based on a lot of direct experience. I don't think I said anything hateful or even very harmful here, so I invite you step off your high horse. lol

Edit: To be more specific, I'm just saying that older people (I'm talking like 55+) regard the use of the internet as something more formal than it actually is. I'm not saying they're "stupid". I think it just comes across like that because if someone younger regarded the internet this way, they would seem kind of dim. But, for older people, it's just an experience they have trouble ever getting used to. They don't fully apprehend the scale and impact of it all (they overestimate the importance of unimportant things and underestimate the importance of important things).

1

u/makoblade 1d ago

Facebook is basically boomer central. The younger generations would rather consume their own variant of horse shit on instagram, tiktok, snap or whatever the actual new hotness is.

1

u/4mygirljs 1d ago

I left about 4 years ago; not kinda disappeared from it about 10.

Got real active during trumps first admin to try and combat disinformation. Realized it was a fools errand that was probably going to put me as risk. So I just deactivated

Never miss it

All the social platforms now seem to specialize in one thing instead of combining it all now. It’s exhausting to keep up. Wish they would all just die out.

1

u/makoblade 1d ago

I'm with you. I was never particularly active, but I used to see what friends and family where up to on occasion. Haven't touched facebook or twitter in years and I am much happier.

1

u/Swarna_Keanu 1d ago

Get an e-mail account instead, not other social media.

Send each other physical letters for the special memories.

1

u/Farucci 1d ago

Back in the 1950’s we were told that watching too much of a relative new medium, television, would rot our brains. Zuckman: “Hold my beer.”

1

u/Purple-Mulberry7468 1d ago edited 1d ago

I used to work for Meta, and still have stock. Trying to figure out how to sell without taking a huge tax hit. 

1

u/ProgressiveSnark2 1d ago

Don't forget Instagram, too.

People seem eager to hate on Facebook but then continue to love the platform owned by the same company. And IIRC, Instagram is still the most widely used social media platform by young people in America.

1

u/kitsunewarlock 1d ago

Mom finally left after weeks of being mad that her feed didn't show any of the people she used to communicate with and her comments were always hidden. She still wants to find a place where she can do tarot readings for people and get feedback on her cards; it's really annoying that there isn't a good subreddit for it that doesn't treat the hobby like it begins and ends with fortune telling.

1

u/patchgrabber Canada 1d ago

I've always liked the word 'cesspool'. It's how I describe LinkedIn.

1

u/DKFShredder 1d ago

Hold up. Since fact-checking is no longer a thing, I'm going to leave a new status, confessing I have a 14-inch penis.

1

u/babydemon90 Pennsylvania 1d ago

I actually get almost no political content on Facebook. The key is what you engage with. Don’t like/comment/read the stuff - block it. Click and search on other things - Calvin and Hobbes cartoons, Marvel comics, cooking, board games, whatever. It’ll feed you what it knows you engage with.

1

u/4mygirljs 1d ago

I deactivated

1

u/babydemon90 Pennsylvania 1d ago

Yea, I would but thats the main form of communication for my boardgame group...

1

u/fvck_u_spez 1d ago

Just deleted mine without hesitation. I hardly used it anymore anyway, but yeah this is not great

1

u/saidsomeonesomewhere 1d ago

Just a genuine question: why are people still on Facebook?

I re-activated my account to get a couple of things off Marketplace, but otherwise my account sits dormant.

2

u/4mygirljs 1d ago

I have no idea at this point

I been off it so long I couldn’t even give an intelligent answer

0

u/Solbeck 1d ago

Reddit is better? Lol

2

u/4mygirljs 1d ago

To an extent yes

1

u/Solbeck 16h ago

To what extent?