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Users abandon Meta platforms after it takes away speech protections, fact-checks
Meta recently ended its third-party fact-checking program in the United States and disbanded its diversity, equity and inclusion team.
Just days after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a series of ‘right-wing’ changes to company policies ahead of Donald Trump taking office, many users are boycotting the company's platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram, reported NBC News.
Meta recently ended its third-party fact-checking programme in the United States and disbanded its diversity, equity and inclusion team. The company will also introduce a community notes system similar to Elon Musk’s X.
One of their most controversial moves has been the update of their policy on hateful conduct, which allows for LGBTQ people to be termed as “mentally ill".
Also Read: Meta apologises over Zuckerberg’s remark
Users reactions
An NBC report shows that hundreds of users have posted on various social media accounts that they would be shutting down their accounts. A similar phenomena had occurred in response to the platform X when it was acquired by Elon Musk.
One user, Marie Valencia, said, as quoted by NBC, "I no longer feel safe to post on either platform as a queer Chicana (Mexican-origin American) woman." She has started to post on Blue-sky, an alternative to X, as well as a platform for Latina women called Amigahood.
Also Read: ‘Victory’: BJP after Meta apologises for Zuckerberg's remarks on polls in India
Cord Jefferson, director of Academy Award best picture nominee “American Fiction,” announced on Sunday that he was leaving Instagram and would be active on blogging site Tumblr.
“So many things are getting bleaker and grosser by the day. And while we can’t place the blame for all of it at the feet of tech oligarchs, we can place the blame for a lot of it at the feet of tech oligarchs,” Jefferson wrote on Instagram. “I’m doing what little I can to shut the increasingly stupid ideas that shape online spaces like this out of my life.”
Stanford University law professor Mark Lemley, who has been representing Meta in a copyright dispute related to artificial intelligence, announced on Monday that he would be ending his representation of the company and reassessing his use of Meta’s platforms.
“I have struggled with how to respond to Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook’s descent into toxic masculinity and Neo-Nazi madness,” Lemley said, as quoted by NBC. He also stated that he had not quit Facebook as he had friendships on the platform that he didn't want to be affected by the Meta CEO's “mid-life crisis”.
