Meta was caught blocking Pixelfed, a decentralized Instagram-like photo-sharing platform, on Facebook, but it says it didn’t mean to do this.

On Bluesky, some users posted about being unable to share links to Pixelfed on Facebook, and 404 Media soon published its own story sharing more reports of this. However, a Meta spokesperson told Engadget that this Pixelfed blocking was actually being done in error, with its system incorrectly flagging the links as spam. The company added that the links would be reinstated.

More Facebook users have been sharing links to other social media platforms like Pixelfed — which just launched a mobile app — following Meta’s controversial changes to its content moderation policies. Last week, the company confirmed that it would stop using fact-checkers in favour of an X-like ‘community notes’ program, roll back restrictions on topics like immigration and gender identity and bring back political content to users’ feeds. With these changes, users can say harmful things like “gays are freaks” and “immigrants are grubby, filthy pieces of shit” — examples of permissible sentences that Meta itself reportedly cites in its own employee training materials.

Naturally, this has led to a lot of uproar from those using Meta’s Facebook, Instagram and Threads platforms, with searches for how to delete them even trending over the past several days. 404 Media also reports that many Meta employees have also pushed back against these changes internally, leading to company-wide “chaos.”

However, Meta has continued to defend its decision to loosen its policies. “Meta’s platforms are built to be places where people can express themselves freely. That can be messy. On platforms where billions of people can have a voice, all the good, bad and ugly is on display. But that’s free expression,” wrote Joel Kaplan, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, in the company’s original blog post outlining the changes.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was also on Joe Rogan’s podcast to stand by the company’s recent moves. “The whole point of social media is basically, you know, giving people the ability to share what they want and, you know, it goes back to, you know, our original mission, [which] is just give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected,” he said.

Of course, people have also pointed out that the timing of all of this is quite suspect, given that Donald Trump will become U.S. president once more on January 20th. Therefore, people accused Zuckerberg of relaxing Meta’s policies to curry favour with the upcoming administration. Trump himself even admitted last week that Zuckerberg is “probably” responding to past threats that Trump has made towards Meta. The president-elect has previously called the Meta CEO “Zuckershmuck” and declared Facebook an “enemy of the people.”

Image credit: Shutterstock

Source: Engadget