There's been a lot of talk about Mark Zuckerberg's sudden appearance. intense courtship of the incoming Trump administration – abandoning fact-checking in favor of X-style fundraising (nobody cares about fact-checking But it is a community record. It doesn't seem to get better.– Go to Fox News and Joe Rogan to say Facebook is all about freedom of speech right now. Loosen content restrictions to allow people to write on Facebook that gay people are mentally ill.
Listening to him, hard-liners feel insincere, just as Zuckerberg will do whatever seems politically expedient at any given moment. Facebook is a private company and can decide what content is allowed on its service. Just as Twitter executives once debated requests from the White House to remove content, Facebook can leave out whatever it wants. But during the first administration President Trump has repeatedly threatened Send Zuckerberg to jail Regarding Facebook's censorship of conservative content and Meta's continued FTC antitrust trial in April, Zuckerberg's overture seems like a ploy to make all of Meta's problems disappear within a few years.
And Zuckerberg is lucky that Facebook has one of the most powerful advertising products ever created. And that puts him in an enviable position. It's easy for advertisers to abandon Twitter (now X) because it has never been a good place to advertise. The service doesn't require a real name like Facebook, and it never collects much useful information about its users. This is a key part of why FTC Chairman Lina Khan went after Meta in the first place—it cemented its power by buying or copying competitors. No matter what you think about Zuckerberg, he is one of the best businessmen in recent history.
Major brands like Dell or Coca-Cola advertise on Twitter to reach the coastal elite, while Facebook has always had success with local small businesses. This is because they can target sandal ads directly to the right people. And returns are almost guaranteed. By placing $1 into a Facebook ad, it generated $2 in sales. This is why Facebook, Google, and Amazon got involved. more than half or the entire digital advertising market They're incredibly powerful. The same thing happened with X.
In general, 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 its platform. favorable 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, ensuring that Meta does not completely eliminate content moderation. But it is much less restrictive.
There's a new one. article in Financial Times Evaluating the potential backlash of Meta's new stance, here is an excerpt:
Critics argue that crowd-based fact-checking efforts are much slower to spot falsehoods and conspiracies than professional, trained individuals. and can be manipulated by the user.
Lou Paskalis, chief executive of market consultancy AJL Advisory and a former media executive at Bank of America, said in a community note the meta changes “create problems for risk-averse marketers” and that some of the additions will “Reducing Meta Dependency” followed.
Other advertising executives They described feeling “nervous” and were seeking more information from the platform about how to implement the changes.
“Brands are entering a new world where established operating rules can no longer be relied upon,” said Patrick Reed, Group CEO of Imagination, a marketing agency.
Will Meta have to sue advertisers to keep spending on its platform? Musk does it with– Maybe not. After all. Negotiating money 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 will forgive many sins.
Advertisers likely won't abandon Meta, but that shouldn't be interpreted as an endorsement of Zuckerberg's moves. They won't abandon Meta because it will hurt their bottom line.