Credit: Josh Calabrese via Unsplash. https://unsplash.com/@joshcala
Meta’s move to stop fact-checking might be as messy for its advertising dollars as free speech can be to the political process.
While many warn of brand danger if there’s a rise in fake news and misinformation, Meta’s Facebook is hard to ignore when it comes to advertising campaigns.
Meta argues the change to Community Notes, where users can alert to potentially misleading posts which might need more “context”, will restore “free expression” to Facebook and Instagram after the current moderating system resulted in “too much censorship”.
“Meta’s platforms are built to be places where people can express themselves freely,” according to Joel Kaplan, Meta’s chief global affairs officer. “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.”
Commentators see the move by founder March Zuckerberg as aligning the platform’s interests with that of the incoming Trump administration in the US. President-elect Donald Trump told Fox: "They have come way."
This change will bring back political content on Facebook, Instagram and Threads.
However, analysts warn of a danger to Meta’s advertising business which is second in the world to Google in gathering digital ad dollars.
Emarketer principal analyst Jasmine Enberg said the move could “spook” many advertisers.
"Brand safety remains a key factor in determining where advertisers spend their budgets,” Enberg said.
“Social media is already a minefield for content that many brands deem unsafe, and Meta’s change could exacerbate those problems."
Billionaire Elon Musk saw a departure of advertisers from X, formerly Twitter, when he turned the platform into a free speech zone.
X has missed out on nearly $6 billion in ad revenue since Musk took over in 2022, according to an estimate by WARC.
But Facebook is a different animal to X. Forrester Principal Analyst Kelsey Chickering says Meta’s changes will put some ad dollars at risk.
“We’ve seen this moderation story play out already on X. But Meta isn’t X. It’s a much stronger paid media platform,” she says.
“It offers unprecedented scale to advertisers with auto-optimisation capabilities between Facebook and Instagram (and eventually Threads). It’s an incredibly efficient one-stop-shop for brands to reach their target audiences.
“While it was fairly easy for many advertisers to say goodbye to X, the same won’t be true for Meta. Meta’s apps are — and will remain — a core part of most companies’ media mix. And Meta’s position is only strengthened by the uncertainty around TikTok’s future.”
Consumers are already wary of social media platforms. Forrester data shows 81% of US online adults said there’s a lot of fake news and misinformation on social media.
“If these policy changes result in platform experiences riddled with spam and hateful content, consumers might spend their time elsewhere,” says Chickering.
Zuckerberg, in a speech at Georgetown University in 2019, argued that free expression has been the driving force behind progress in American society and around the world.
Inhibiting speech, however well-intentioned, often reinforced existing institutions and power structures instead of empowering people, he said.
“Some people believe giving more people a voice is driving division rather than bringing us together,” he said. “More people across the spectrum believe that achieving the political outcomes they think matter is more important than every person having a voice. I think that’s dangerous.”
Meta has complex systems to manage content across its platforms, partly in response to pressure to moderate content.
However, Meta’s Kaplan said this approach has gone too far.
“As well-intentioned as many of these efforts have been, they have expanded over time to the point where we are making too many mistakes, frustrating our users and too often getting in the way of the free expression we set out to enable.
“Too much harmless content gets censored, too many people find themselves wrongly locked up in ‘Facebook jail,’ and we are often too slow to respond when they do.
“We want to fix that and return to that fundamental commitment to free expression.”
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