Meta’s ‘free speech’ change has raised concerns among advertisers

Mark Zuckerberg’s unexpected ‘speak’ meta content edit has raised concerns among advertisers that harmful content and misinformation will spread across the social media platform.

A number of advertising executives told the Financial Times that the move was to end Meta’s move. Fact checking program And weakening hate speech policies could cost the platform, which represents about $135 billion in annual sales, if brands fear their ads may run alongside toxic content.

Fergus McCallum, head of advertising agency TBWA MCR, said: “Some brands are already carefully evaluating their plans and there is no doubt that it will be a commercial challenge for both parties.”

The £1.5tn company’s massive divestment of its online content reflects Zuckerberg’s push to curry favor with President-elect Donald Trump and his new right-hand man, Elon Musk.

Within days, it replaced Maytown’s head of international policy, Nick Clegg, with prominent Republican ally Joel Kaplan, and appointed martial arts titan and Trump friend Dana White to the board. On Friday, the company announced internally that it was ending its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts, while Zuckerberg appeared on Joe Rogan. Podcast To say that corporations are “culturally entrenched” and need more “masculine energy” and “less respect for violence.”

But the move to weed out professional whistleblowers in favor of the ‘community notes’ approach pioneered by Musk X – where users themselves flag misinformation – has calmed the ad industry over product safety concerns over competitors X and TikTok in recent years.

Meta, along with Google, has long controlled marketing costs, building a relatively safe-haven reputation, high returns on investment, and close ties to major brands. On the other hand, X is hit by N Migration of market traders Following Musk’s purchase of the platform two years ago, it has seen its earnings decline somewhat under threat.

Richard Exon, co-founder of ad agency The Joint, said: “Meta has done a good job of cleaning up the worst toxic content and if their new (approach) reverses that, advertisers will see it very quickly and punish them.

On X, community notes allow users to “add context” below other people’s posts, although this only appears when other contributors agree that consensus from “diverse perspectives” is useful.

Critics argue that crowdsourced fact-checking efforts are much slower to identify lies and conspiracies than professional, trained individuals and are more likely to be exploited by consumers.

The meta community notes that the shift “creates a headwind for risk-averse traders,” said Lou Pascalis, CEO of marketing consulting firm AJL Advisors and a former media executive at Bank of America, reducing some reliance on meta.

Other ad executives said they felt a “sense of anxiety” and were seeking more information from the platform about how exactly the changes would be implemented.

“Brands are entering a new world where there are no established rules of operation,” said Patrick Reid, CEO of creative advertising agency Imagination Group.

Concerns have been raised about plans to change the Metasystems to “dramatically reduce” the amount of content the automated filters remove from the platform.

This includes lifting restrictions on topics such as immigration and gender, focusing the systems on content such as terrorism, child exploitation and fraud, as well as suicide, self-harm and eating disorders. Zuckerberg himself admitted that the system now contains “less bad stuff.”

Other industry executives were skeptical that the transition would create more of a setback for META’s advertising business. “I don’t think advertisers care as long as the platform works – but they do if the content is more relevant,” said one head of a large ad agency.

Alex Chessman, head of UK enterprise, O’Brien, said: “The cold, hard truth is that advertisers only care if it hurts their numbers. If performance is stable, no one will lose sleep over ‘where’ or ‘how’ their ads will appear.

At this week’s Consumer Electronics Show, Meta Chief Marketing Officer Alex Schultz said the company’s brand safety tools will remain in place and that the company is “in no rush” to give advertisers “time to adjust and understand.” Nicola Mendelsohn, head of Meta’s global business team, wrote in a LinkedIn post that the company will continue to invest in security tools for advertisers.

Meta’s policy was immediately changed by divided opinion within the company. One sees some workers as bringing back the necessary protections to mediation reforms, but he added that workers were “frightened to be honest” because Metta has been through so many traumas since the outbreak.

Another staff member said the internal response to the change to community notes has been mostly positive, especially since fact-checking is seen as a “thankless” task and “one side or the other has to accuse you of their side.”

Those who know Zuckerberg say the man has long been a supporter of free speech, but has shaped his stance over the years in response to political and public pressure.

“It’s becoming a trend,” says former policy director Katie Harbat, who worked on Meta’s electoral strategy for a decade. After every major election since 2016, Mark makes these big changes – going where the societal and regulatory winds are blowing. This is one of those changes. “

In 2010, Zuckerberg launched a new Facebook campaign designed to counter criticism of misinformation. It introduced third-party fact-checking for the first time as part of a move in late 2016. But this week Zuckerberg blasted governments and “legacy media” for pushing his companies to do “more and more censorship” and accused fact-checkers of being “very politically biased”.

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

Asked about Meta’s latest changes at a press conference, Trump said he thought the tech group had “come too far” and added that Zuckerberg was “probably” responding to previous threats against him.

On the campaign trail, Trump accused the social media chief of impeachment on election interference charges and labeled him an “enemy of the public” for allegedly censoring his organization.

Experts see Zuckerberg’s change as an ideological decision.

The meta boss is pouring billions of dollars into his ambition to become a “leader” in artificial intelligence, and will publicly promote his open-source approach to AI as regulators roam the space globally.

“The biggest reason why is that Marc Elon, (venture capitalists Marc) Andreessen and (David) Sachs are seeing the influence they have on Trump and looking to make sure he’s in that mix,” Harbath said.

The move comes ahead of the tech group facing a major antitrust trial in April. The Federal Trade Commission has accused the social media group of monopolizing and using a “buy or bury” strategy to eliminate competitors, and is seeking to force the company to divest its purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp.

David Evan Harris, chancellor’s public scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, said: “Zuckerberg needs to be a chameleon to avoid being torn apart by antitrust actions because the company knows that anyone with power in Washington can have a lot of influence.” , Berkeley and former Meta employee.

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