 "Mark Zuckerberg on Joe Rogan's podcast.")
Users are leaving Meta in droves.
The company’s move to the right spearheaded by CEO Mark Zuckerberg ahead of the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump is causing a user exodus from many of Meta’s platforms including Facebook and Instagram.
But what happened? And what do we know about users leaving?
Let’s take a closer look:
What happened?
Zuckerberg has announced a number of changes to Meta in recent weeks.
According to NBC, the company has vowed to end fact-checking on its platforms in the United States.
It has also said it will loosen its rules surrounding political discourse and transition to a “community notes” system that is akin to the one used by the Elon Musk-owned X.
Meta will also allow LGTBQ people to be called “mentally ill” on their platforms.
The firm has also ended its diversity , equity and inclusion programme and disassembled its team.
Zuckerberg himself drew attention to the changes in Meta’s policies by going on the Joe Rogan Experience where he slammed the “culturally neutered” companies that have looked to distance themselves from “masculine energy.”
“Masculine energy I think is good, and obviously society has plenty of that, but I think that corporate culture was really trying to get away from it,” Zuckerberg was quoted as saying by Bloomberg.
“It’s like you want feminine energy, you want masculine energy,” he added. “I think that that’s all good. But I do think the corporate culture sort of had swung toward being this somewhat more neutered thing,”
“If you’re a woman going into a company, it probably feels like it’s too masculine. It’s — there isn’t enough of the energy that you may naturally have,” he said. “You want women to be able to succeed and have companies that can unlock all the value from having great people no matter what their background or gender.”
What do we know about users leaving?
According to Gizmodo, searches on how to delete Meta accounts have risen considerably.
“How to delete Facebook” and “how to delete Instagram” searches hit a high on Google Trends after Meta’s announcement.
“How to quit facebook,” “how to delete threads account,” and “how to delete instagram account without logging in” also hit breakout status.
According to Tech Crunch, that means they registered an increase of 5,000 per cent or more.
NBC reported that the development is similar to what occurred after users fled X in the aftermath of Trump’s election win.
“I no longer feel safe to post on either platform as a queer Chicana woman,” artist Marie Valencia told the outlet.
The term Chicana means to American women of Mexican descent.
“I have seen a steady stream of folks abandoning their profiles as well, especially in the last couple weeks as Meta has dismantled DEI and speech protections for those most vulnerable online,” she added.
She warned that Meta would “become another X.”
American Fiction director Cord Jefferson wrote on Instagram, “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.”
“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 was representing Meta in its copyright case over Artificial Intelligence, said he would no longer work for the firm.
“I have struggled with how to respond to Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook’s descent into toxic masculinity and Neo-Nazi madness,” Lemley said. “While I have thought about quitting Facebook, I find great value in the connections and friends I have here, and it doesn’t seem fair that I should lose that because Zuckerberg is having a mid-life crisis.”
With inputs from agencies