this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2025

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Privacy

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John Oliver launches "Make yourself less valuable to Meta" website, suggests Signal, Mastodon, Pixelfed, and BlueSky as Meta alternatives (johnoliverwantsyourraterotica.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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John Oliver cited a 5000% rise in search queries related to leaving Meta and deleting accounts. Among the topics mentioned in the analysis, attention was drawn to early Facebook's naivete with regard to moderation requirements, the constitutional framework, and a history of governmental interference.

Oliver debunks common right-wing "cry censorship" talking points, as well as the objective difficulty of moderation endeavors, and how direct threats by Trump may have influenced Zuckerberg's turnaround.

Oliver went on to suggest Signal, Mastodon, Bluesky, and Pixelfed as alternatives that "do not seem as desperate to fall in line with Trump". For those reluctant to completely ditch Meta, Oliver revealed a new site with step-by-step instructions to "make yourself less valuable to them".

The guide was a collaboration with the EFF, and includes settings' tweaks for Facebook and Meta, whose 98% of revenue comes from micro-targeting ads, the host previously cited, to increase privacy, and recommends Firefox, Privacy Badger, as "other measures" to take in order "to block advertisers and other third parties from tracking you".

The segment culminated in a mock advert, in which the new Meta's approach to moderation is coined as "Fuck it", and hints to racism, internet scams, and calls to genocide running rampant on Meta's platforms.

The clip reminds the origins of Facebook as a site to "rank college girls by hotness", and its implication in genocide in Myanmar, which was more thoroughly discussed in an Oliver's previous special on Facebook in 2018.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Love it, thanks! Just did it. The chosen domain may be a bit unfortunate though, I think, because it could be punished by many algorithms.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

The problem I see with this is that a Meta employee literally came out on Mastodon recently and revealed that non of these settings do anything and are false flags.

https://misskey.de/notes/a3ax4tqomg

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Use Magic Earth or Organic Maps instead of Google Maps too. Neither will track you.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Organic Maps is fantastic except for one crucial thing. Traffic info. That is literally the only thing stopping me from using it instead of GM or Waze. I need traffic info, I don't want to be late to stuff because I didn't know an accident happened, or a road got flooded, or there's just high volume traffic, etc.

I'm not sure how they would implement it and keep everything relatively privacy friendly (well it's FOSS so at the very least they aren't selling our data ❤️), but I need it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Have a look at Magicearth.com

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Just tried it out yesterday and today, and thought it was pretty good! Compared the routes it showed me with Waze (GM data) and it showed similar/exact routes.

For others who are curious, the only issues I noticed were:

Has a stroke when trying to navigate to my house, seems to think there isn't an exact road next to it, meanwhile organic maps shows and navigates to it perfectly fine. Seems to struggle with the exact location of a place, especially in a group of buildings.
While navigating, if you tap the directions to see ahead, a bar comes up and shows you. However, when you try to dismiss this panel, it goes blank and stays on the screen.

Other than that, seems great, has all the features Organic Maps does and more. Likely to be my permanent navigator app.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

I've tried so hard but I don't think magic earth, organic maps, or osmand likes me

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Correct me if wrong, but isn't there a law in the us that says, all us companies have to give the government access to all data without disclosing this information? That would rule out any us based companies for privacy concerns as alternatives atm.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

You should expect any data hosted on a server to be accessible by the given government…and thanks to NSA you should expect any data that travels through the US to be accessible by their government

Privacy in this case is around the selling to advertisers

[+] [email protected] -7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

For the masses maybe, but Signal & Bluesky ain’t it for a Privacy forum

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago (3 children)

How is Signal not privacy-friendly? It's the most private thing that can be called a "messenger app".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

It is entirely centralized in the US—& there is 100% chance the NSA is tapped in on the metadata they can get a hold of. You can’t self-host. They have been hostile toward alternate clients & are very adamant you use one of the duopoly of Google/Apple mobile OSs as your primary device (screw you if you want to run an alternative OS or no phone I guess). There is a hole in the history for the server that leaves room for conspiracy theories.

Signal is adequate for privacy-focused normies, but does not deserve the pedestal it is put on which is why many folks more serious about the ideals instead of focusing on making concessions are skeptical of Signal. This isn’t a hot take or new stance.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The most private thing for messenger app are the messenger applications using the XMPP protocol.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Only if both parties use encrypted extensions.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

I think the main red flag is that they are spending so much money. In 2023 they had 55m monthly active users and they spent $35m. The casual WhatsApp user that might switch to Signal is definitely not gonna pay for this so either Signal fans have to donate more or Signal has to start finding other monetization which if we look at other companies means selling private data.

(Also, half their spending is on hosting and they are not self hosting so a donation to Signal is basically a donation to Amazon and Google.)

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Signal doesn't have private data to sell; that's the whole point.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

And my point is that since their costs are so high they will either have to become a paid app or start collecting data to sell. Or become more efficient but you’d think if they knew how they’d already done that.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

either Signal fans have to donate more or Signal has to start finding other monetization which if we look at other companies means selling private data.

Lo and behold, after RiseUp now Signal is accused of selling data. Well, it is well known (and audited) that Signal keeps so little metadata it is not even useful to the authorities that have subpoeana-ed it.

This is an extra-ordinary claim you have to back with extra-ordinary evidence, in order to save face.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Where did I accuse them of selling data right now? I’m simply noting the risk that they will have to cover the insane costs of their inefficient infrastructure through either becoming a paid app or collecting data to sell.

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