Wrong calculation for Meta. Shortly after the announcement of the paid formula for obtaining your certification badge on Facebook and Instagram, searches for how to delete your account literally exploded. We are talking about a jump of 1566% for Facebook and 2400% for Instagram.
It will be difficult to feign surprise. User reaction was almost immediate when Meta announced the arrival of new paid plans on Facebook and Instagram. Concretely, this subscription, currently tested in Australia and New Zealand and whose price is equivalent to 16 €, gives above all enough to the precious sesame of social networks: the certification badge. In other words, Mark Zuckerberg’s group is precisely following the path taken some time earlier by Twitter.
Inevitably, the news was not particularly well received by users. All over the web, voices have been raised to denounce this practice, which is already very controversial on Twitter. But the phenomenon is all the more impressive thanks to the figures revealed today by VPNOverview.com. On Google Trends, there is a very clear increase in the number of searches to delete your Facebook and Instagram account.
Related — How to Delete Your Facebook Account
Users want to flee Facebook and Instagram en masse
Indeed, the search for “deactivate Instagram” suddenly increased by 2400% this Sunday, February 19, and by 1566% for Facebook. This event is of course not a coincidence, since it took place precisely on the day Meta announced the launch of its new formula. The study does not say whether the Internet users in question have indeed left the said platforms, but it is a good indicator of the poor reception of the public.
It was to be expected. Elon Musk was not particularly unanimous either by announcing that the certification badge could now be obtained via a subscription to Twitter Blue, for 8 dollars per month. It would therefore seem that we are seeing a turning point for social networks, visibly looking for new ways to make money. From there to know if users will follow the movement, the latest events can only call for caution.
