Since the advent of Facebook and Instagram, since their release to the public, they have permanently entrenched themselves in both the public and private lives of billions of humans worldwide. From personal conversations to product launches to sharing creative works, these two megastars of the social media world have become part and parcel of our lives. And yet, amidst all this, the recent reveal of a subscription plan from Facebook and Instagram has caused a massive uproar among users, leading to many of them deciding to ‘deactivate’ their search results on the platform.
According to reports, the subscriptions plans which were announced recently have revealed certain features which would be open exclusively to premium users. This mean that for regular users, who have not upgraded to premium, certain search results shall be hidden from them. This decision, to hide certain items from the general userbase, has sparked a collective outrage from the public, leading to many users viewing the new subscription plans in an unfavorable light.
As a direct result of the public’s discontent with the new subscription plan, there has been an explosion of users who have decided to deactivate their search results on Facebook and Instagram. The idea behind this sudden move is twofold: first, to protest against the new plan, and second, to protect their personal data, as the relevancy of the search results will be significantly diminished if they opt-out of the platform’s search functionality.
This sudden spike in deactivations has also taken many by surprise as this clearly painted how unpopular these plans were. While we can only speculate as to the motivation of the users which deactivated their search results, the numbers speak for themselves and have sent a strong message to the social media giants.
Though only time will tell if these protests will have any effect on the future of the subscription plan or not, one thing is for sure — the sudden explosion of users opting out of their searches and deactivating their accounts has certainly sent a strong message to the authorities that people are united and are against any kind of suppression of their data. How the authorities will respond to this message remains to be seen, but at least for now, users have made it clear that any attempt to limit the power of users on their platform is sure to be met with strong resistance.
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