People Are Leaving Facebook in Following the Company's Content Moderation News

Social media is filled with options these days, which means that users can make decisions about where they want to spend their time. Recently, some users have decided to leave Facebook behind, leading many to wonder what spurred their decision to leave the company for good.

The moves might be related to the recent announcement that Mark Zuckerberg made about how his companies are changing their approach to content moderation. Here's what we know about why people are leaving.

Some people, particularly young people, have been leaving Facebook for years. The platform itself seems designed largely for older generations, and its mix of ads and posts doesn't appeal to a generation that prefers video and imagery on social media.

The more recent, acute crisis for Facebook, though, appears to have been spurred by Meta's announcement that it would be abandoning fact-checking and moving toward community notes for much of its content.

While Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said this move was designed to encourage free speech on the platform, many saw it as a total capitulation to the right wing of American politics. Trump and his supporters have been fairly explicitly threatening Meta for some time, and many saw these moves as a response designed to avoid punishment.

Regardless of his exact motivations, this was a pivot point for many similar to the one they experienced with Twitter.

Mark seems OK with making his platform much more like X (formerly Twitter), in that it will allow all sorts of speech with minimal moderation, and therefore be friendlier to misinformation and all varieties of hate. There was a similar mass exodus from X in the days after the 2024 election, in large part because the platform had become a toxic stew of right-wing grievances in the aftermath of Elon Musk's takeover.

It remains to be seen whether the same thing will happen to Facebook, but what's clear is that plenty of people aren't all that interested in sticking around to find out.

Mark shot to fame and earned a massive amount of money on the back of Facebook, but Meta is now much more than just that singular product. Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger are all key parts of the company, as is Threads.

This small protest may not ultimately change things on Facebook all that much. Much of the content on the platform now is from high-profile accounts, and less is from people you're actually friends with, many of whom probably don't post there regularly.

Still, if users don't want to spend time on Facebook anymore, there is nothing that obligates them to stick around.

The fractured nature of social media means that people can congregate in a bunch of different places, and as long as they find what they need, that's what matters most. You shouldn't feel any loyalty to any of these companies. Whether you decide to leave Facebook for personal reasons or political ones, the choice is ultimately up to you if you want to stay or go.