What is something most of us do after a long day? Go to social media and scroll through a bunch of meaningless content.
While TikTok has been undergoing controversy, the suite of social media apps that are known as Meta has been making some of its own concerning changes. As consumers who use and enjoy Meta applications like Facebook, Instagram, or Threads, it is important to understand just what the company has been up to.
I want to say before I start to explain all the things that Mark Zuckerberg and his company have been up to, I am simply telling you what is happening. What you choose to do with this information is your own business.
I personally have not even decided if I am going to keep my Meta accounts up or not, but I am concerned by the changes they are starting to make.
To start, let’s clarify what Meta is. Meta Platforms Inc. was introduced to the world on Oct. 28, 2021. Before that, the company was known as Facebook Inc., Facebook, and now Meta, both set their company goals as connecting people across the world.
Of course, the company in 2003 when college-aged Mark Zuckerberg and his friends Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin started making the social media platform known as Facebook (Vault).
There was a lot of drama at the beginning of the company, especially when the social media site was launched in February 2004. That turmoil ended up inspiring the Oscar-winning film “The Social Network.” Especially since young Zuckerberg cut the others out of the company.
Zuckerberg made himself the face of Facebook and now Meta. Meta has continued to buy and innovate messaging and social media applications. Now they own Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, and Workplace. The company works out of 80 cities globally with 17 data centers.
While it seems like TikTok is the most popular social media network right now, the fact is that the Meta suites create long-term users. People who use Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp tend to be loyal users.
Zuckerberg took the group project of an online directory for Harvard students and made himself a social media empire. No matter what Zuckerberg promises, he is human and therefore he has biases that will impact how his company operates. Initially, that meant allowing activists and social reform groups to have a platform to speak.
According to Britannica, Zuckerberg’s “immigration reform group Fwd.US criticized mass deportation of undocumented immigrants in 2015.” He appeared to be very left-wing when it came to politics and activism.
But in 2016, his mostly liberal-leaning politics took a hit. Facebook was blamed for spreading misinformation, leading to Zuckerberg’s promises about new and improved fact-checking algorithms. But putting tags on misinformation or hateful posts was not enough.
After the events of Jan. 6th, 2021, Zuckerberg posted to Facebook to say “We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great. Therefore, we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely.”
This means Zuckerberg banned President Trump from both Facebook and Instagram before Twitter made the same choice.
The ban was lifted in 2023, and with it, Zuckerberg’s actions started to look more conservative. Including a letter he wrote about the Biden Administration in August 2024. While I couldn’t find the letter itself, reports of it on Vox felt like it was potentially adding fuel to an already burning fire.
The article noted that a mere two months before the 2024 Presidential election, “Zuckerberg seems to be throwing Republicans a political grenade, something that can fire up the base and use to get mad about Democrats.”
The Washington Post seems to think “Zuckerberg is working to get into Donald Trump’s good graces.” A little shocking when a decade ago Trump opposed Zuckerberg’s anti-hate speech rules on Facebook.
Zuckerberg even “attended a black-tie party to celebrate the new administration at Peter Thiel’s mansion in the nation’s capital,” the night before the inauguration, where he had a front-row seat (The New York Times).
Now that Meta has put all its censorship and fact-checking on the back burner, allowing hate and misinformation to go unmonitored on Instagram, Facebook, and Threads, people are noticing that it only seems to apply to Republican speech. Any posts or articles with ‘immigration’ in them are being taken off Meta sites.
To many, it looks like Zuckerberg is making a move for some political power. And in this administration, that means supporting Republicans.
So how is this going to impact the users? How is that going to change the social media sites you, your friends, and your family all use?
Meta will still be acting against any content that may contain bullying and harassment. Fact-checking will be taken out of play but according to Gizmodo the system will be, “replaced with crowdsourced notes (which can be slow to propagate), and users are permitted to write things they could not in the past, such as that homosexuality is a mental illness and all undocumented immigrants are criminals.”
Oh and of course, there is the growing monster of Meta’s developing AI. https://www.nytimes.com/article/meta-ai-scraping-policy.html
In a post on his Instagram, Cord Jefferson the director of an Academy Award best Picture nominee, stated, “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.” He can still be found on Tumblr but the director has left Instagram.
Algorithms on apps like Instagram and Facebook are starting to push political or hateful content. People I know are even opening Instagram to find they are now following accounts they have never even looked at before.
Plus, there is the whole ‘they are stealing our data and tracking our shopping habits’ issue. My family tried an experiment about a year ago, my whole family spent 2 days saying random things about wanting to buy a new truck. By the second day, my mom had ads for truck companies on her Facebook and I had them popping up on my YouTube page.
We were not saying these sentences to any recording devices, but in the same rooms as our phones, our Alexas, and our smart TV. It took Facebook 2 days to catch on and start giving us what it thought we wanted.
So, it is time to ask yourself, is a bunch of silly videos and fun photos worth feeding algorithms that are starting to concern even the lawyers that are supposed to be defending them?
I mean Mark Lemley, the lawyer who used to represent Meta in a dispute about their AI, just dropped them as a client and posted on his LinkedIn, “I have struggled with how to respond to Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook’s descent into toxic masculinity and Neo-Nazi madness.” And he made the personal choice to stay on Facebook because it allows him to keep in contact with his family.
But he will be refusing to purchase anything based on Facebook and Instagram ads. He has deleted Threads and switched to BlueSky, another replacement site created after the fall of Twitter.
When Twitter went down, people were faced with a similar challenge. The way so many alternatives were created within a month tells me that even if we lose the Meta social media networks, we will still be able to connect with our friends and family somehow.
There will always be a new place to find silly videos or keep your photos, the problem is, finding one that won’t be selling your information, forcing political agendas, allowing hateful speech, or using your content to feed their AI.
For those who are interested in finding a new social media site that is not controlled by one of America’s most wealthy men, I suggest looking into open-source media sites. They are essentially social media sites that allow you to like, comment, and share things from other media sites. It is like having a Gmail account but emailing someone with an Outlook account. Or having a Samsung phone and texting someone who has an iPhone. Forbes recently published an article that highlights some of the up-and-coming Meta replacements.
I am not trying to tell you how to live your life, or where to spend your time. I, like everyone else my age, spend hours every day scrolling through Instagram or even Tumblr. However, being a consumer means not only are we buying and using these products, but we are endorsing the companies and people who make them.
I think Western consumer culture needs to adapt. We need to start questioning what we are buying and where it is coming from. Even if we can’t always afford to make the most ethical choices, it is good to know.