How to cancel and delete your Facebook, Instagram, and Threads accounts since Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the company would be shutting down its third-party fact-checking system, relaxing and rolling back its content moderation policies Google searches for are increasing explosively in the United States. Previous limits on the amount of political content in user feeds.
Experts see the move as an attempt to pander to the incoming Trump administration and avoid political retaliation. The impact of Meta's new policies could have a profound impact on the types of posts, hateful and violent language, and misinformation that could spread even faster across Meta's platforms.
The backlash was swift. This week, and especially in the past two days, we've seen a spike in interest in searches related to exiting the meta platform. Google searches for terms like “how to permanently delete Facebook” reached a maximum score of 100. This is the highest level of interest on Google Trends.
Image credit: Google Trends
According to Google Trends, “How to delete all your Facebook photos”, “Facebook Alternatives”, “How to Quit Facebook”, “How to Delete Thread Account”, “How to Delete Instagram Account Without Login” ” related searches are increasing. Searches exploded and popularity suddenly increased by more than 5,000% compared to the previous period.
The explosive growth highlights the backlash against Mehta's decision to roll back protections against hate speech and inflammatory political content.
Meta introduced fact-checking and content moderation policies after years of widespread misinformation and violent speech on the platform caused real-world damage. A case in point is the attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, which was fueled by coordinated calls for violence on Facebook and Instagram. Even as Facebook identified ways to curb the spread of political polarization, conspiracy theories, and incitement to violence, it has not taken strong enough action against the Stop the Steal movement promoted by President Trump's allies. An internal document revealed that the company had not taken any necessary measures.
A “breakout” means an increase in search terms of 5000% or more. Image credit: Google Trends
Mehta also acknowledged that its platform was used to incite violence in Myanmar, where members of the Burmese military committed genocide against the Rohingya people.
In 2021, Zuckerberg said that Metacommunity “doesn't want politics and struggle to take over our service experience,” which led to a reduction in the company's political discussions. Last year, the company also stopped actively recommending political content to users on Instagram and Threads, a move that was controversial among creators and users. Going forward, Meta plans to gradually add political content back to the feed.
Zuckerberg said the new policy is an attempt to restore freedom of expression on Meta's platform and parrots comments made by Elon Musk on his Platform X. Meta's CEO pointed out that his platform will replace third-party fact checkers with a community notes system similar to the Community Notes system. X allows users to flag posts that they think need more context.
Searches for Bluesky have also skyrocketed following changes to Meta's content management and fact-checking. Image credit: Google Trends
During the same period, searches for Google's “Facebook alternatives” have also skyrocketed, with Bluesky and Mastodon, two decentralized social media platforms that have grown in popularity since Elon Musk took over Twitter and renamed it X. Searches for are also rapidly increasing.
Mastodon CEO Eugen Roszko spoke out this week about the meta's content moderation changes, calling the changes a “concert for people of conscience.” He also noted that users who cross-post from Threads to Mastodon via Threads' Fediverse sharing feature will be monitored on Mastodon for hate speech and violations of the platform's policies.