Much has been said about the sudden, intensively courting incoming Trump administration—abandoning fact-checking in favor of X-style crowdsourcing (no one paid attention to fact-checking, but community notes it doesn’t seem better); on Fox News and Joe Rogan to say Facebook is now all about free speech; loosening content restrictions so that it is now acceptable to write on Facebook that homosexuals are mentally ill.
Listening to him, the hard pivot feels disingenuous, as if Zuckerberg will do whatever is politically expedient at any moment. Facebook is a private company and can decide what content is and isn’t allowed on its services — the same way Twitter executives debated White House requests to remove content, Facebook can leave whatever it wants. But during his first administration, President Trump repeatedly threatened to send Zuckerberg to prison due to Facebook’s censoring of conservative content, and Meta still has an FTC antitrust trial in April. Zuckerberg’s overtures look like a trick to make all of Meta’s problems go away for a few years.
And Zuckerberg is lucky because Facebook is one of the most effective advertising products ever created, which puts him in an enviable position. It was easy for advertisers to give up on Twitter (now X) because it’s never been a good place to advertise—the service doesn’t require real names like Facebook, and it’s never collected much useful information about its users. That’s a big part of why FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan is dealing with Meta in the first place — she’s cemented her power by buying or copying competitors. Whatever you think of Zuckerberg, he is one of the best businessmen in recent history.
Big brands like Dell or Coca-Cola have advertised on Twitter to reach the coastal elite, while Facebook has always been successful with local, small businesses because they can target a sandal ad directly to the right person and get an almost guaranteed return – put $1 in Facebook ads, get $2 in sales. This is why Facebook, Google and Amazon now count more than half of the entire digital advertising market. They are incredibly effective. X has always been small with roughly 300 million active users compared to Meta’s more than 3 billion; even Snapchat and Pinterest are bigger than X. Boycotts of Meta won’t happen the same way they did with X.
Generally speaking, advertisers don’t like their brands appearing next to divisive or hateful content. Coca-Cola doesn’t want to be placed next to neo-Nazi imagery or be seen as indirectly endorsing such content by advertising on a platform that allows it—when you think of Diet Coke, the company wants you to imagine warm feelings of polar bears and Christmas; Volkswagen no longer wants to be associated with Hitler, and so on and so forth. To be sure, Meta won’t get rid of content moderation entirely, but it will be much less restrictive.
There is a new one article in Financial Times assessing the potential rebound effect of Metin’s new stance. Here is an excerpt:
Critics argue that mass fact-checking efforts are far slower at flagging 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 reliance” as a result. ” at the Met.
Other advertising executives described feeling “nervous” and asked for more information from the platform about exactly how the changes would be implemented.
“Brands are entering a new world where they can no longer rely on established rules of operation,” said Patrick Reid, group managing director at marketing agency Imagination.
Will Meta have to sue advertisers to keep spending on their platforms like Musk did with X? Probably not. Ultimately, money talks and if advertisers continue to see a positive return on their investment, they will continue to advertise on Facebook and Instagram. It’s the same thing with CEOs of big companies – when they print money for their companies, investors forgive a lot of sins.
Advertisers aren’t likely to abandon Meta, but that shouldn’t be interpreted as an endorsement of Zuckerberg’s moves. They won’t leave Meta because it would hurt them.