Will opting out of fact-checking have a real impact on ad revenue?

Meta is betting big on free speech and is changing its fact-checking program to a community-driven scheme similar to X’s Community Notes. The move was announced on Tuesday and is happening in the background changing political and social landscape, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company made the decision amid willingness to accept freedom of speech.

“We will return to our roots and focus on reducing errors, simplifying our policies and restoring free speech on our platforms,” ​​he said. “More specifically, this is what we are going to do. First, we’re going to get rid of fact-checking and replace it with X-like community notes, starting with the US.”

“We’ve seen this approach work on X – where (it) empowers (it) the community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context, and people from different perspectives decide what context is useful for other users to see . It may be a better way of achieving our original intention of giving people information about what they see, and it’s less prone to bias,” he said.

Once launched, Meta will not write community notes or decide which ones to show. They will be written and rated by contributing users, and like X, Community Notes will require consensus among people with different views to prevent biased ratings.

“We intend to be transparent about how different perspectives affect the Notes that appear in our apps, and we work to share that information. People can sign up today (Facebook, Instagram, Threads) for a chance to be among the first to participate in this program when it becomes available,” he explained.

The company also plans to gradually roll out Community Notes initially in the US over the next few months and continue to improve them throughout the year. The political content moderation policy will also be changed, Zuckerberg said, with the goal of reducing the amount of political content in users’ feeds.

Meta is also going to recommend more political content based on these personalized signals and will empower users to control how much of that content they see.

“We’re going to gradually bring it back to Facebook, Instagram and Threads with a more personalized approach so that people who want to see more political content in their feeds can,” Zuckerberg added.

What is the reaction in the network?

This news caused mixed reactions from netizens around the world. Media intelligence firm CARMA also saw 268,100 mentions of Meta dropping fact-checking worldwide. The sentiment of conversations about Meta before the removal of the fact-checker was 27.3% positive and 24.1% negative, after which the sentiment was 11.4% positive and 38.1% negative.

A MARKETING-INTERACTIVE check showed on X that some say fact-checking used to be a great journalistic function but has somehow become a weapon, while some say fact-checking, easily corrupted by agenda and bias, is bad.

Commenting on the move, Forrester Principal Analyst Kelsey Chickering said this major step will break the dam of unsustainable brand security measures in 2025. “The sentiment behind Meta’s proposed changes to stop censoring harmless content makes sense. However, even Mark Zuckerberg admits there is a trade-off: Meta won’t catch all the ‘bad stuff’ on the platform as a result,” she added.

“Consumers already think social media platforms are full of fake news: Forrester data shows that 81% of US adult online respondents said social media is full of fake news and misinformation. If these policy changes result in the platform being riddled with spam and hateful content, consumers may want to spend their time elsewhere,” Chickering added.

In fact, closer to home markets such as Australia and Singapore are considering banning social media. Recently, the Singapore government is reportedly considering introducing legislation to that effect which restricts the use of access to social networks to protect young users. It happens after In November of last year, a law was passed in Australia that prohibits children under the age of 16 from accessing social networks.

Given Meta’s huge user base and high level of engagement, this move could create more serious challenges for the moderation and control of malicious content. said Arun Kumar, Director, Activation & Experience, APAC, Assembly. “While some consider user-driven fact-checking to be less biased and more balanced than expert-led efforts, it highlights the importance of robust moderation to minimize the risk of malicious content slipping through.”

“Social media’s high level of engagement and dynamic communities make it incredibly attractive to advertisers. However, no system is without flaws, and the complete elimination of risky content on social platforms is unrealistic,” he added.

Impact on the marketing front

On the advertising front, Chickering said the changes could put some ad dollars at risk, but Meta’s influence and reach is undeniable. While it’s been easy enough for many advertisers to say goodbye to X, that won’t be true for Meta, she said.

“Meta programs are—and will continue to be—a core part of most companies’ media mix. And Meta’s position is only strengthened by uncertainty about the future of TikTok.”

“We’ve already seen this story of moderation on X. But Meta is not X. It’s a much stronger paid media platform. It offers unprecedented scale for advertisers with automatic optimization capabilities between Facebook and Instagram (and eventually Threads). It’s an incredibly effective one-stop shop for brands to reach their target audience,” she added.

Chickering’s words ring true on the advertising front, where Meta has seen huge spikes in ad spending over the past two years and is expected to grow in the coming year. According to data, Meta’s revenue rose 22% year-on-year to US$39.07 billion in July 2023, with most of its sales coming from advertising, mainly on Facebook and Instagram. CNBC. Its growth rate was double that of Google’s advertising business, which reported an 11% increase in sales to $64.6 billion. Alphabet’s earnings report.

With more than three billion daily active users and high ad performance, moving away from Meta will be a difficult decision for most brands, Assembly’s Kumar said.

“As we monitor the impact of Meta’s proposed brand safety solutions, advertisers should insist on more transparent communication, increased transparency and proactive measures to protect their associations from malicious content,” he added.

In addition, brand safety risks are more likely to be along ideological/political lines, as opposed to criminal issues, which continue to be off-limits, said Werner Jücksch, senior vice president, head of social APAC at Media.Monks.

“Taken together, these points suggest a small impact in terms of advertiser investment. In fact, I find it surprising that Meta didn’t notify advertisers of this change before it was announced.”

Still, there will be brands that have an ideological backlash and a few that will look at the facts and make that call, said Ranga Somanathan, a senior industry executive who spent years at media companies such as Publicis and Omnicom.

“So there may be a knee-jerk reaction at first, and the reaction normalizes over time. I don’t expect a mass exodus of brands from Meta unless the audience first ‘unsubscribes’ from the social network.”

A combination of self-regulation by AI Tech and manually by communities has the potential to mitigate fake news and its credibility. He added:

If self-regulation ceases, the platform will eventually lose its integrity and trust factor, leading to less audience and advertiser support.

“It’s in Meta’s best interest to create a reliable environment to stay relevant to the audience it serves,” he said. Somanathan also adds that with Meta moving into place, other platforms may step up their fact-checking because of the hole left by Meta.

“When platforms abdicate their responsibility for self-regulation, it opens them up to government regulation, as well as independent watchdogs stepping in to screen and report fake news. It’s not just fake news, the lack of oversight will accelerate fraud cases, leaving users in the dark. a platform vulnerable to attacks,” he said.

The more likely scenario is that other players will follow suit, Monks Yuksch said, adding that newcomers trying to get in are usually very niche. “One way of looking at it is that Meta is adapting to the inevitable change in the regulatory environment in the US. As other companies see this happening, they are also loosening some of the measures that could be perceived as left-wing censorship. Nick Clegg’s departure and the Meta board reshuffle are very clear signs of this.”

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