Mark Zuckerberg’s unexpected “free speech” overhaul of Meta’s content moderation has raised concerns among advertisers that harmful content and misinformation will proliferate across social media platforms. is causing it.
Multiple advertising executives told the Financial Times that Meta’s move to end its fact-checking program and weaken its hate speech policy comes as brands fear their ads will run harmful ads. , said it could hurt the platform, where marketing accounts for most of its $135 billion in annual revenue. content.
Fergus McCallum, boss of advertising agency TBWA\MCR, said: “Some brands will already be thinking carefully about their plans and it will definitely be a commercial challenge for both sides.” .
The $1.5 trillion company’s significant loosening of its online content comes as Zuckerberg’s latest efforts to curry favor with President-elect Donald Trump and his new right-hand man Elon Musk escalate. It shows.
In just a few days, he replaced Meta’s head of global policy, Nick Clegg, with prominent Republican ally Joel Kaplan and added martial arts mogul and Trump friend Dana White to the board. Appointed. On Friday, the company announced internally that it was also ending its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts, while Zuckerberg appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast and said the company would be “culturally neutralized”. He said there was a need for more “masculine energy” and “celebration”. Please be a little more aggressive. ”
But the move to exclude professional fact-checkers in favor of the “community notes” approach pioneered by Mr. In light of the concerns, it has shaken up the advertising industry.
Meta has long dominated marketing spending alongside Google, building a reputation as a relative safe haven due to its high return on investment and close relationships with major brands. By contrast, X suffered an exodus of marketers over moderation concerns and saw its revenue plummet after Musk acquired the platform two years ago.
“Meta has done a great job of sorting out the worst excesses of harmful content,” said Richard Exon, founder of advertising agency Joint. “If their new approach undoes this, Advertisers will quickly find out and punish them.”
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X allows users to suggest “adding context” under other people’s posts in community notes, which agreed that the consensus of other contributors “from a variety of perspectives” would be helpful. Visible only if
Critics argue that crowdsourced fact-checking efforts are much slower at labeling falsehoods and conspiracies than trained experts and can be manipulated by users.
Lou Pascalis, CEO of marketing consulting firm AJL Advisory and a former media executive at Bank of America, said Meta’s transition to community notes “creates headwinds for risk-averse marketers.” He added that some people may become “less dependent” on meth as a result.
Other advertising executives said they were “nervous” and wanted more information from the platform about how exactly the changes would be implemented.
“Brands are entering a new world where they can no longer rely on established operating rules,” said Patrick Read, group chief executive of creative advertising agency Imagination.
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Concerns have also been raised about Meta’s plans to change the system to “significantly reduce” the amount of content removed from the platform through automated filters.
This includes content related to “unlawful and high-severity violations” such as terrorism, child exploitation and fraud, as well as suicide, self-harm and eating disorders, as well as content related to topics such as immigration and gender. This includes lifting restrictions. Mr. Zuckerberg himself acknowledged that his company’s systems would no longer be able to catch “things that are that bad.”
Other industry executives were more skeptical that the move would significantly impact Meta’s advertising business. “I don’t think advertisers care as long as the platforms work, but they will if content becomes more polarized,” said one executive at a major advertising agency.
Alex Cheeseman, Head of UK Enterprise at Outbrain, said: ‘The cold, hard truth is that advertisers only care about hurting their numbers. No one loses sleep over where or how something appears. ”
At this week’s Consumer Electronics Show, Meta’s chief marketing officer Alex Schultz said the company’s brand safety tools remain in effect and are being rolled out to give advertisers “time to adjust and understand.” “I’m in no hurry,” he said. Nicola Mendelsohn, head of Meta’s global business group, said in a LinkedIn post that the company continues to invest in safety tools for advertisers.
Meta’s policy change immediately divided opinion within the company. Some staffers see the moderation update as rolling back important protections, one person said, but Meta has experienced several severe layoffs since the pandemic, so it’s hard to keep employees safe. added, “They’re afraid to actually speak out.”
Another employee said that internal reaction to the move to community notes was largely positive, especially since fact-checking “is inevitably going to be accused of taking sides.” This is because it is considered a “thankless” job.
People who know Mr. Zuckerberg say he has long been a supporter of free expression but has shaped his positions over the years in response to political and public pressure.
“It’s becoming a trend,” said Katie Harvath, a former policy director who worked on election strategy for Meta for a decade. “Since 2016, with every major election, Mark has undergone a major shift toward where the social and regulatory winds are blowing. This is another recalibration.”
Zuckerberg first introduced third-party fact-checking in late 2016 as part of a series of measures to address criticism of misinformation on Facebook. But Zuckerberg this week accused the government and “legacy media” of encouraging his company to become “increasingly censorious” and accused fact-checkers of being “too politically biased.”
“Mark, Meta, welcome to the party,” X CEO Linda Yaccarino said at a press conference Tuesday.
Asked about the new meta changes at a press conference, Trump said he thought the tech group “has come a long way” and said Zuckerberg “probably” responded to threats he previously made against him. He added that he is doing so.
During the campaign, Trump threatened to jail social media chiefs for election interference and called his company an “enemy of the people” for censorship.
Experts say Mr. Zuckerberg’s shift is as much a business decision as it is an ideological one.
Meta chief has poured billions of dollars into his ambitions to become a “leader” in artificial intelligence and has publicly touted an open-source approach to AI as regulators circle the field around the world.
“A big reason for that is that Mark sees the influence that Elon, (venture capitalists Marc) Andreessen and (David) Sachs have on Trump, and he wants to be a part of that. ,” Harvath said.
The move comes ahead of the technology group facing a major antitrust trial in April. The Federal Trade Commission has accused the social media group of using a “buy or bury” strategy to maintain monopoly power and neutralize competitors, forcing the company to acquire Instagram and WhatsApp. Trying to force you to rewind.
David Evan Harris, a prime minister at the University of California, said: “To avoid breaking up his company under antitrust laws, Mr. Zuckerberg must recognize that he could be heavily influenced by those in power in Washington.” “We need to be chameleons,” he said. , Berkeley, former Metastaff.
Additional reporting by Christina Criddle in San Francisco and Clara Murray in London
