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Will Meta’s Revised Approach to Moderation Impact its Ad Business?


So will Meta’s decision to loosen moderation rulesand get rid of fact-checking, make Facebook and Instagram less brand-safe as a result?

That was the view of X, after Elon Musk’s move towards reduce internal content moderation staffin favor of community user notes, with various reports and investigations suggesting that the platform is no longer a safe place for brands to display their messages. As a result, X’s ad revenue has declined by about 60%.

So, will the same thing happen now for Meta, with Zuck and Co. which will take a big hit, based on a new wave of third-party reports that will show their copycat approach makes its platforms less secure in the same way?

Well, maybe.

To begin with, part of X’s problem in this regard was Musk himself and his tendency to make headlines with his statements and stances. Which is also Musk’s strength, because he’s actually the reason his companies don’t have to pay for ads, because Elon is a walking promotional department within himself.

But at X, with Elon taking increasingly controversial and divisive positions while also being the platform’s most-followed user, the association between these views and the app probably did more damage to the platform’s reputation than Meta’s announced changes will.

While at the same time, Meta’s changes are controversial and will similarly lead to more harmful content being served to users in its apps.

For example, based on the latest Meta updates Hateful behavior ruleswhich were published today:

  • Meta will no longer outright ban all use of slurs that attack people based on “their protected characteristics.” Protected characteristics include race, ethnicity and gender identity. So, in essence, Meta has removed a clause that could prevent people from being targeted with terms based specifically on these elements.
  • Meta will now allow people to use terms related to gender or gender, even when used in an offensive manner, within discussions related to political or religious topics, “such as when discussing transgender rights, immigration or homosexuality.” Thus, users will be allowed to use potentially harmful terms within these conversations, with Meta no longer seeking to contextualize such terms, as it has done in the past.
  • There have also been various changes designed to simplify the rules and allow more freedom around potentially offensive expressions, while Meta has also removed restrictions on comments that target people based on the suggestion, for example, that they may be spreading COVID-19 (although this now is largely obsolete in any case).
  • Meta also wants to keep their hands off access, in general, within discussions of things like immigration and gender identity, which are the subject of frequent political discourses and debates.

Essentially, Meta has now relaxed its rules to allow more types of speech, while the reduction in internal moderation and external fact-checking staff will also result in more such comments being exposed on the app anyway. Which means more offensive, harmful posts will be shown to more people on his apps.

Which Zuck himself admits.

In his update overviewZuckerberg explained the following:

“The reality is that this is a compromise. This means we’ll catch less bad stuff, but we’ll also reduce the number of innocent people’s posts and accounts we accidentally remove.”

So more harmful posts will get through, and with more than 3 billion daily active users, the scope of potential damage in this regard is significantly greater than X was.

Logically, this should lead to more advertisers rethinking their approach to Facebook and IG, as they did with X. Although I doubt we won’t see the same reaction.

Because Facebook and Instagram provide such a wide reach, because they each have such large audiences, the potential is too significant to turn off for many brands. So while it was relatively easy to take a moral stand on Xu, which has a fraction of Meta’s audience, I just don’t see brands willing to do the same this time around.

But realistically, it should happen. There should be the same kind of critical reporting on Meta’s ad placement and the impacts these changes will have on brands, because there will be impacts, just as there were on X, and Meta should face the same scrutiny that X has for allowing such .

And again, it’s going to be worse on Facebook and Instagram, just based on exposure potential. The relative damages here will be significant.

So, should this make you rethink your approach to social media ads? Yes, you probably should, but I doubt the moral panic will reach the same level this time around.



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