If you’ve been thinking about breaking up with Facebook, Instagram, or Threads lately, you’re not alone. 

Searches for “how to delete Facebook” and other Meta account exits have gone through the roof in the U.S. over the past week. 

The catalyst is Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that Meta will scrap its third-party fact-checking system, and relax content moderation policies.

But while most of the mainstream media and social media conformists knee-jerked into saying Meta was abandoning fact checking, few mentioned that the fact checking wasn’t working well, and the “Community Notes” system they’re starting to use works better anyway.

The backlash has been swift and decisive.

Google Trends data shows a tidal wave of searches from people looking to jump ship from Meta’s platforms. The term “how to permanently delete Facebook” reached a perfect 100 on Google Trends’ interest scale—a rarity that signals peak search interest.

But there's a lot of historical context to look at here. Facebook went through multiple rounds of “delete Facebook” campaigns in the 2010’s, but they never lasted.

Most of the people that got off of Facebook eventually came back, because you can’t just go to a new social media platform and expect the legacy of your connections to migrate with you.

Most of the people on the new platform are people you have no engagement history with. And all of your connections are still on the platform you wanted to leave, not on the new platform you’re going to.

The platform algorithms see you as a brand new user with no history. You get no engagement.

So weeks or months later, people just come back to the original platform. If history rings true, most people will not stop using Facebook, Instagram or Threads because of a change in how they do fact checking. They’ll just keep doing what they have been doing.

Remember, it was only recently that big groups of people went to Threads to escape X, and now they want to get off Threads. People are just platform-hopping without thinking things through.

Meanwhile, X is implementing great new features, aimed at creating a better experience for those that stayed.

Don’t be a conformist. Look at the bigger picture.