Zuckerberg Provides More Context on Meta’s Moderation Shift

With Met, and especially CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has come under fire for his decision to remove fact checkingand moving to a Community Notes-type model for some elements of moderation, the Facebook founder took to Threads to provide more context about the decision and what he actually expects from the change.

Which provides a little more context as to why Meta decided to take such a seemingly drastic step, though what Zuckerberg doesn’t say is probably just as telling in that regard.

First, in terms of why Meta made this move, Zuckerberg reiterated that people want to see more politics in their Facebook and IG feeds again, after previously saying they want less.

According to Zuckerberg:

“People want to be able to discuss civic issues and make arguments that are in the mainstream of political discourse, etc. Some people may leave our platforms for virtue signaling, but I think the vast majority and many new users will find that these changes make the products better.“

What’s confusing is that Meta has completely reversed its previous statements regarding its definitive move away from “civic” (read “political”) content, which it was both implementing and praising, even just a few months ago.

Back in 2021, Zuckerberg noticed that:

“One of the main pieces of feedback we’re hearing from our community right now is that people don’t want the politics and struggle to take over their experience on our services.”

That’s what prompted Meta’s larger effort to reduce political discourse and what it defined as “political” topics in the stream.

Zuckerberg repeated this approach in letter for House Judiciary Committee last Augustin which he again clarified his intention to distance Meta from politics, in order to avoid perceptions and controversies from the past.

After all, as Meta and Zuckerberg argued, news and politics were never significant drivers of in-app engagement, so it was actually more trouble than it was worth, and so Meta was better off moving away from those entirely.

Indeed, engagement with news content, Meta says, only compensates about 3% of all Facebook activityand less so on Instagram, while posts linking to news publishers’ domains on FB only compensate about 0.2% of all feed content views.

Meta instead found success in using AI recommendations to push Reels to users, which drove significant gains in engagement in their applications. More than 50% of the content that users see on Instagram, e.g. now comes via AI recommendationsand indeed Meta seemed to have found the best formula for maximizing engagement while also addressing concerns about political influence and anxiety.

So what has changed?

According to Zuckerbergthe last US election marked a “cultural tipping point towards re-prioritizing speech”.

As such, Meta is only responding to what users want, which is now clearly more political content and less moderation of their opinions. At a time when a president notorious for false claims returns to the White House, while also appointing various questionable representatives to key positions.

Fact-checking seems to be more valuable than ever, but for some reason Zuckerberg has taken the election as a trigger to back away from everything he and his representatives have been saying for the past four years.

Zuckerberg also notes that the company has been too aggressive in censoring content:

“Even if our systems mistakenly remove 1% of content, that’s millions of people whose accounts are affected. It’s by far one of the most common problems people report, and wrongly banning fewer people is obviously a good thing.“

Which seems logical. Oh, accept the fact that the same works in reverse, that 1% of people being exposed to harmful content, which Zuckerberg also admitted will happen in this new system, also means millions of people will be affected by the same.

So, false claims, misinformation, all these elements that Meta now wants to mitigate will be more exposed in their applications.

Of course, any error percentage can be problematic. But it is certain that some mistakes, in order to stop the spread of misleading lies, are better than simply opening the floodgates to them.

Zuckerberg also commented on Meta’s approach to Community Notes, a system that replicates X, which is expected to launch in the coming months.

“I think Community Notes will be much better at adding context to a broader set of topics than the old program was. Most people have rarely, if ever, seen fact checks, but Community Notes will provide greater coverage based on comments from the wider community.“

Community notes are a good system, conceptually, because they allow for wider input into key discussion notes and can help diffuse the spread of misinformation and wrong claims.

But various studies have shown that Notes communities are simply not effective as a single moderating solution.

For example, many community notes on X are never displayed to users due to the requirement to reach cross-policy agreement before the note is approved. In other words, community note reviewers of opposing political views must agree that the note is necessary before it is displayed. And with Trump’s passionate supporters ready to back up any claim that comes out of his mouth, on some of the most damaging and most divisive issues, such a deal will never come.

And that’s before you take into account similar political divisions in other regions, while reports have also shown that there are organized groups infiltrating the group of Notes community contributors in order to suppress certain viewpoints.

At the Meta level, that’s going to be a much bigger problem, and it’s surprising to see the Meta fully support Model X, rather than using it as a filler.

On the plus side, at least for publishers, Zuckerberg says the changes will allow them to regain greater reach:

“We’re going to start recommending citizen content again, so that content should get more distribution and if people like it, you’ll get more followers.“

Referral traffic from Facebook has practically dried up for many publishers, so this will be a welcome development if it actually results in more traffic.

But overall, it’s confusion more than anything analysts are expressing. Meta was adamant about moving away from news and no longer wanted to promote or amplify news content because it was, in essence, bad for business.

But after one dinner with Trump, Zuckerberg seemingly changed his mind.

I suspect that the regulatory pressure that Trump threatened was more damaging than what the company might see in the audience reaction.