‘Too big to fail’? Industry reacts to Meta content moderation changes
On Tuesday, Meta announced changes to its platforms’ content moderation policies that, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted, will mean the company is “going to catch less bad stuff” across Facebook, Instagram and Threads.
The tech giant has decided to halt its third-party fact-checking programme, replacing it instead with an X-like Community Notes feature. In addition, Meta quietly updated its hateful conduct policy to now allow users to, for example, call women “household objects” or refer to transgender or non-binary individuals as “it”.
In response, although advertisers are considering whether and how to respond to potential brand-safety concerns, analysts and agency strategists don’t believe brands will reduce activity on Meta platforms.
Eb Adeyeri, vice-president, strategic partnerships, paid social, at The Brandtech Group agency Jellyfish, said that while the agency has received queries from clients on how the policy changes could impact their brand, none has expressed initial interest in reducing spend with Meta.
“While I don’t think brands will abandon the platform or pause spending, I do think the move will force paid social advertisers to pay more attention to Meta’s brand-safety and suitability tools in ways that they haven’t had to in the past,” he told The Media Leader.
Big Tech ‘kissing the ring’
In a recorded video, Zuckerberg decried how “governments and legacy media have pushed to censor more and more” content on social media and suggested that fact-checkers “have just been too politically biased”.
He added that Meta would be moving its trust and safety teams from California to Texas to “do this work in places where there’s less concern about the bias of our teams”, implying without evidence that Texas is less politically biased.
“The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritising speech,” Zuckerberg continued.
The move came just days after Meta replaced president of global affairs and former UK deputy prime minister Sir Nick Clegg with Joel Kaplan, an outspoken Republican.
This week, Meta also announced staunch Donald Trump ally and Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White would be joining its board of directors.
Playing defence in politics and in tech: Nick Clegg leaves Meta
In a blog post, Kaplan argued that Meta’s previous approach to content moderation went “too far” in stifling freedom of expression and compared Meta’s earlier fact-checking efforts to censorship. In an interview with Fox News, Kaplan further characterised US president-elect Trump as a “big defender of free expression”.
The activity drew sharp rebuke from Ruben Schreurs, CEO of independent media consultancy Ebiquity, who suggested to The Media Leader that Meta’s policy change was “opportunistic” in reaction to Trump’s election.
Schreurs referred to the decision as “one of multiple signals that Big Tech is kissing the ring; not just that of Trump but also that of his partner, Elon Musk”, adding: “This is a major step back for society.”
Stickier than Twitter
Meta’s adjustments echo similar policy changes taken by Twitter (now X) after it was purchased by Musk in 2022.
Following the acquisition, Musk disbanded the platform’s trust and safety teams and replaced existing content moderation efforts with an ostensibly laissez-faire approach to speech (Musk has stifled speech he disagrees with and that is critical of him personally). Brands, in reaction, broadly pulled adspend over concerns that ads would have a higher likelihood of being placed next to hateful speech and misinformation.
X subsequently sued the World Federation of Advertisers and the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, as well as Unilever, Mars, CVS Health and Orsted, alleging advertisers had illegally conspired to boycott the platform. The lawsuit was widely seen as frivolous by the media industry, although Unilever later settled.
In a LinkedIn post, Meta head of global business group Nicola Mendelsohn appeared to head off brand safety concerns, assuring advertisers that the company will “continue to be focused on ensuring brand safety and suitability through our robust suite of tools for advertisers” through continued investment.
However, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, co-chair of Meta’s independent Oversight Board, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that while she welcomes the company’s aim to more effectively fact-check posts, she is “very concerned” about the potential negative impact moderation changes could have on minority groups.
Unlike Twitter, which never played a significant part in a lot of media plans, Meta is considered core to most brands’ digital media strategies by many in the industry.
“I think Meta is too big to fail now, too well-embedded,” media analyst Alex DeGroote told The Media Leader. “Twitter has been pretty marginal for most ad campaigns, too niche and provocative and political. Meta, however, is core and very hard to buy around in terms of media spend.”
DeGroote added that while the changes create a “thorny issue for [media] buyers” at large brands, most small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) — which make up the majority of Meta’s ad revenue — simply “want reach and aren’t bothered, unless content is grossly offensive”.
Adeyeri agreed that SMBs are unlikely to abandon Meta. Drawing a comparison to the short-lived Facebook ad boycotts in 2020, which occurred in protest of the company’s handling of hate speech and misinformation, he noted that SMBs didn’t broadly abandon the platform then and are unlikely to now.
“I don’t think the move will play too much on the broad sway of them as Facebook is often their primary source of acquiring customers,” said Adeyeri.
‘Uncomfortable situation’ for brands
However, the adjustment comes as media agency strategists have begun reconsidering social media’s often outsized place on media plans. In September, EssenceMediacom released new analysis that found large brands could be spending up to three times more than is optimal on social media.
In an op-ed, Josh Gornell, head of paid social at EssenceMediacom, said that paid social offers “significant reach” but noted that it has “become the dumping ground for catch-all, all-adult, broad-buy campaigns”.
He recommended advertisers take more “thoughtful consideration” of their spend across the channel, much of which is dominated by Meta’s platforms.
Indeed, Jake Dubbins, co-founder of the Conscious Advertising Network and managing director of independent agency Media Bounty, told The Media Leader that the latest developments should cause advertisers to re-evaluate Meta’s advertising effectiveness in light of greater unease over brand safety.
“Ultimately, Meta are free to do what they like,” said Dubbins. “They can choose to ‘catch less bad stuff’. Advertisers are free to not advertise next to that bad stuff.”
He admitted that it is currently uncertain whether the brand and user experience on Meta platforms will deteriorate “to a point where brands simply do not want to be associated” with the “bad stuff” highlighted by Zuckerberg.
“Most brands want to appeal to a wide range of consumers to grow,” Dubbins continued. “If your brand pops up next to content from the extreme far right, who want to deport some of your consumers and literally reduce the number of people that can buy your product, then that is a pretty uncomfortable situation.”