John Oliver's Facebook Instructions Will Make Your Data Less Valuable to Meta

There probably aren't many fans of Meta left in the year 2025, but if there were, some of them were undoubtedly disheartened by all the ways Mark Zuckerberg and co. seemed to kiss Donald Trump's ring in the days after he was inaugurated. The company changed its moderation policies and also got rid of many of its internal DEI initiatives.

All of those changes, as well as Meta's long history of other controversies, including the ways Facebook contributed to a genocide in Myanmar, have left many users looking for a way out. Thankfully, John Oliver is here to help and offered his viewers concrete ways that they could make themselves less valuable to Meta. Here's what they are.

Because Meta generates the vast majority of its revenue through advertising, Oliver said that the most concrete way that his viewers could decrease the company's power is by making themselves less valuable to the company. As the old adage goes, if something is free, it's because you're the product being sold.

One of the concrete ways you can make yourself less valuable is by cutting off Facebook and Instagram's ability to track your activities across the web.

“They would probably not want me to tell you that you can change your settings so that Facebook and Instagram cannot profit as much from your data anymore,” he said, and then told viewers that he had created a guide that prevents Meta from tracking you: “If you’d be interested in a step-by-step guide on how to do that, simply visit johnoliverwantsyourraterotica.com.”

Silly URLs aside (they're just part of the package with Oliver), the instructions are a genuinely helpful guide for those who can't quit Facebook or Instagram but want to make their information less useful to Meta.

The tips include concrete steps you can take to minimize Facebook's value, as well as general guidelines like adopting a web browser like Firefox and installing plugins to keep your data protected.

These steps are useful not just because they might have some (albeit small) effect on Meta's bottom line but also because they're an important reminder of all the ways your data is compromised every time you go online. You might be subconsciously aware that Meta is tracking your activity even when you're not on the app, but taking proactive steps to prevent that might be good practice regardless of how you feel about the company.

As is often the case with Oliver's small campaigns, this one is not likely to radically transform Meta's bottom line. The company is so large, and pulling revenue from so many different people all over the world, that Oliver's viewers changing their settings is not likely to make an enormous dent.

Less money is less money, though, and it's important to respond to corporate behavior you disagree with whenever you can. That doesn't mean that your protest is always going to be a game changer, but if you feel strongly about something, it's better than doing nothing.