Summary
Meta’s recent shift to right-leaning policies, including ending fact-checking in the U.S., scaling back content moderation, and allowing anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, has sparked boycotts and a user exodus.
The company also disbanded its diversity, equity, and inclusion team, drawing criticism.
Prominent users like director Cord Jefferson and nonprofits like Equal Access Public Media have left or reduced activity on Meta platforms.
Many are migrating to alternatives such as Bluesky, Amigahood, and Tumblr, while some remain trapped due to Meta’s dominance in communication and business.
There are two main issues with the large commercial social media platforms. The first is that they do not allow for downvoting. The second is that they maximise engagement rather than quality of posts. The end result is that they consistently push controversial posts (i.e. misinformation).
Factchecking mitigates this but only to a tiny extent. The reason there is far less misinformation on platforms like Lemmy is that content is pushed on the basis of net votes (upvoted minus downvotes) and misinformation tends to be downvoted rapidly.