Meta’s “free expression” review raises concerns with advertisers

Mark Zuckerberg’s unexpected “free speech” overhaul of Meta’s content moderation has raised concerns among advertisers that it will lead to an increase in harmful content and misinformation across the social media platform.

Several advertising bosses told the Financial Times that Meta’s move to end fact-checking program and weakened hate speech policies could cost the platform, where marketing accounts for most of its $135 billion in annual sales, if brands fear their ads may run alongside toxic content.

“Some brands will already be evaluating their plans carefully and it will undoubtedly become a business conundrum for both sides,” said Fergus McCallum, head of advertising agency TBWA\MCR.

The $1.5 billion company’s drastic easing of its online content marks an escalation in Zuckerberg’s recent push to curry favor with President-elect Donald Trump and his new right-hand man Elon Musk.

Within days, this has seen Meta’s global policy chief, Nick Clegg, replaced with prominent Republican ally Joel Kaplan, as well as appointing martial arts titan and Trump friend Dana White to its board. . On Friday, the company announced internally that it was also ending its efforts for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), while Zuckerberg appeared on Joe Rogan. podcast to say that corporations had become “culturally emasculated” and needed more “male energy” and to “celebrate aggression a little more.”

But the move to abandon professional fact-checkers in favor of a “community notes” approach pioneered by Musk’s X – where users themselves ban misinformation – has upset the advertising industry given the security concerns of brand to rivals X and TikTok in recent years.

Meta has long dominated marketing spending alongside Google, building a reputation as a relatively safe haven with high returns on investment and close relationships with big brands. In contrast, X was hit by a Exodus of marketers on moderation issues following Musk’s acquisition of the platform two years ago, which decimated its revenue.

“Meta has done a great job of cleaning up the worst excesses of toxic content and if its new policies undo this, advertisers will quickly and punish it,” said Richard Exon, founder of the advertising agency Joint.

On X, community notes allow users to offer to “add context” under others’ posts, although this will only appear when a consensus of other contributors “from different points of view” agree which is useful.

Critics argue that crowdsourced fact-checking efforts are much slower to label falsehoods and conspiracies than professional, trained individuals, and can be manipulated by users.

Lou Paskalis, managing director of marketing consultancy AJL Advisory and a former media executive at Bank of America, said the change in Meta’s community notes “creates a headwind for risk-averse marketers “, adding that some will “reduce their dependence” on Meta.

Other advertising executives described feeling “nervous” and sought more information from the platform about how exactly the changes would be implemented.

“Brands are entering a new world where established operating rules can no longer be trusted,” said Patrick Reid, group managing director of Imagination, the creative advertising agency.

Concerns have also been raised about Meta’s plans to change its systems to “dramatically reduce” the amount of content its automated filters remove from its platforms.

That includes lifting restrictions on issues such as immigration and sex, to focus its systems on “illegal and high-gravity violations” such as terrorism, child exploitation and fraud, as well as content related to suicide, self-harm and eating disorders. Zuckerberg himself admitted that his systems now catch “less bad things”.

Other industry executives were more skeptical that the change would create much fallout for Meta’s advertising business. “I don’t think advertisers will care as long as the platform works – but if the content becomes more polarizing,” said one head of a major ad agency.

Alex Cheeseman, head of the UK company, Outbrain, said “the cold and hard truth is that advertisers just don’t care if it hurts their number. If the performance remains stable, no one will lose the dream about “where” or “how” their ads appear.

At the Consumer Electronics Show this week, Meta’s chief marketing officer, Alex Schultz, said the company’s brand safety tools remain in place, and that the company “wasn’t rushing” the launch to deliver to advertisers “time to adjust and understand.” Nicola Mendelsohn, head of Meta’s global business group, wrote in a LinkedIn post that the company continues to invest in security tools for advertisers.

Meta’s policy immediately changes the divided opinion in the company. One person said some staff saw the moderation updates as a rollback of important protections, but added that employees were “afraid to really speak up” as Meta has endured several rounds of layoffs since the pandemic

Another employee said that the internal reaction to the change to the community notes has been largely positive, especially because fact-checking is seen as a “thankless” task “since one side or the other is bound to accuse you of taking sides.”

Those who know Zuckerberg say he has been a supporter of free speech, but has shaped his positions according to political and public pressure over the years.

“It’s become a trend,” said Katie Harbath, a former policy director who worked on Meta’s election strategy for a decade. “After every major election since 2016, Mark is making these big changes — going where the social and regulatory winds are blowing. This is another one of those realignments.”

Zuckerberg first introduced third-party fact-checking as part of a series of measures in late 2016 aimed at addressing criticism of misinformation on Facebook. But this week Zuckerberg blamed governments and “legacy media” for pushing his company to “censor more and more”, and accused fact-checkers of being “too political”.

Linda Yaccarino, CEO of X, said in a conference call on Tuesday: “Mark, Meta, welcome to the party.”

Asked about Meta’s new changes at a press conference, Trump said he thought the tech group had “come a long way,” adding that Zuckerberg was “probably” responding to threats he had previously made against him. .

On the campaign trail, Trump threatened to imprison the head of social networks for alleged election interference and called his company an “enemy of the people” for alleged censorship.

Experts see Zuckerberg’s change as a business decision as much as an ideological one.

Meta’s boss has poured billions of dollars into his ambitions to become the “leader” in artificial intelligence, and has publicly promoted his open source approach to AI as regulators around the world circle the space.

“The big reason why Mark sees the influence that Elon, (venture capitalists Marc) Andreessen and (David) Sacks have on Trump and they want to make sure he’s in that mix,” Harbath said.

The move also comes ahead of the tech group facing a major antitrust lawsuit in April. The Federal Trade Commission has accused the social media group of maintaining monopoly power and using a “buy or bury” strategy to neutralize competitors, and is seeking to force the company to reverse its purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp.

“In order not to make the company destroyed by antitrust actions, which he understands can be greatly influenced by whoever is in power in Washington, Zuckerberg must be a chameleon,” said David Evan Harris, a public study of the chancellor at the University of California. , Berkeley is a former Meta staffer.

Additional reporting by Cristina Criddle in San Francisco and Clara Murray in London