Will Meta's scrap of fact-checking have any real impact on ad dollars?

Meta is betting big on free speech and scraping its fact-checking programme, replacing it with a community-driven scheme similar to X’s Community Notes. The move was announced on Tuesday and comes amidst a shifting political and social landscape, with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying that the company made the decision amidst a desire to embrace free speech.

"We're going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms," he said. "More specifically, here's what we're going to do. First, we're going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes similar to X, starting in the US." 

"We’ve seen this approach work on X – where [it] empowers [its] community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context, and people across a diverse range of perspectives decide what sort of context is helpful for other users to see. We think this could be a better way of achieving our original intention of providing people with information about what they’re seeing – and one that’s less prone to bias," he said.

Once the programme is up and running, Meta won’t write Community Notes or decide which ones show up. These will be written and rated by contributing users, and akin to X, Community Notes will require agreement amongst people with a range of perspectives to help prevent biased ratings.

"We intend to be transparent about how different viewpoints inform the Notes displayed in our apps, and are working on the right way to share this information. People can sign up today (Facebook, Instagram, Threads) for the opportunity to be among the first contributors to this program as it becomes available," he explained.

The company is also planning to phase in Community Notes in the US first over the next couple of months, and will continue to improve it over the course of the year. Content moderation policies around political topics will also be amended, said Zuckerberg, with an aim to cut down on the amount of political content in user feeds. 

Meta is also going to recommend more political content based on these personalised signals and will be expanding the options users have to control how much of this content they see.

"We are going to start phasing this back into Facebook, Instagram and Threads with a more personalised approach so that people who want to see more political content in their feeds can," Zuckerberg added.

What is the reaction online?

The news has seen mixed reactions from netizens globally. Media intelligence firm CARMA also saw a total of 268.1K mentions about Meta's removal of fact-checking globally. Sentiments of conversations about Meta before removing the fact-checking programme were 27.3% positive and 24.1% negative, after which the sentiments were 11.4% positive and 38.1% negative.

A check by MARKETING-INTERACTIVE saw on X that some said fact-checking used to be a great journalistic function but somehow it became weaponised, while some said fact-checking that gets easily corrupted by agendas and bias is bad.

Commenting on the move, Forrester principal analyst Kelsey Chickering said this major move will result in the dam breaking on unsustainable brand safety measures in 2025. "The sentiment behind Meta’s proposed changes, to stop censoring innocuous content, makes sense. However, even Mark Zuckerberg admits this comes with 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 riddled with fake news: Forrester data reveals that 81% of US online adults said there’s a lot of fake news and misinformation on social media. If these policy changes result in platform experiences riddled with spam and hateful content, consumers might spend their time elsewhere," Chickering added.

In fact, closer to home markets such as Australia and Singapore are mulling the idea of social media ban. Most recently, the Singapore government is reportedly considering implementing a legislation which limits the use of social media access to protect young users. This comes after Australia recently passed a law in November last year, banning children under the age of 16 from accessing social media platforms.

Given Meta's vast user base and high engagement levels, this move could present more significant challenges to moderating and managing harmful content. said Arun Kumar, director of activation and experience, APAC, Assembly. "While some view user-driven fact-checking as less biased and more balanced than expert-led efforts, it underscores the importance of having robust moderation to minimise the risk of harmful content slipping through."

"Social media's high engagement levels and dynamic communities make them incredibly attractive to advertisers. However, no system is without its 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 that the changes might put some ad dollars at risk, but the impact of Meta and the reach it has is undeniable. While it was fairly easy for many advertisers to say goodbye to X, the same won’t be true for Meta, she said.

"Meta’s apps are — and will remain — a core part of most companies’ media mix. And Meta’s position is only strengthened by the uncertainty around TikTok’s future.” 

"We’ve seen this moderation story play out already on X. But Meta isn’t X. It’s a much stronger paid media platform. It offers unprecedented scale to advertisers with auto-optimisation capabilities between Facebook and Instagram (and eventually Threads). It’s an incredibly efficient one-stop-shop for brands to reach their target audiences," she added.

Chickering's words ring true to the advertising front where Meta saw huge surges in advertising spending in the past two years and it is expected to grow in the coming year. Back in July 2023, Meta saw revenue growth of 22% from a year earlier to US$39.07 billion, with the majority of its sales coming from advertising, primarily on Facebook and Instagram, according to CNBC. Its growth rate was double that of Google’s ad business, which reported a 11% increase in sales to reach US$64.6 billion, according to Alphabet's earnings report.

With over three billion daily active users and strong advertising performance, stepping away from Meta will be a tough decision for most brands, said Assembly’s Kumar.

"As we monitor the impact of Meta's proposed brand safety solutions, advertisers must push for more transparent communication, increased transparency, and proactive measures to safeguard their associations from harmful content," he added.

Furthermore, the brand safety risks are most likely to follow ideology/politics lines - as opposed to criminal issues, which continue to be banned, said Werner Iucksch, SVP, head of social, APAC at Media.Monks.

"Together, these points suggest a small impact from an advertiser investment perspective. In fact, I would find it surprising if Meta had not floated this shift with advertisers before it got announced."

Nonetheless, there will be brands who will have an ideological response and a few who’ll review facts and make that call, said Ranga Somanathan, a senior leader in the industry, with extensive years leading media companies such as Publicis and Omnicom.

"As such there might be some knee jerk reaction initially and the response will normalise over time. I don’t anticipate a widespread exodus of the brands from Meta, unless the audience ‘cancel’ the social network first."

The combination of self regulation using AI Tech and manually by communities has the potential to mitigate fake news and virality of it. He added:

If self regulation stops, the platform will loose its integrity and trust factor overtime, resulting in audience depletion and advertiser support.

"It is in Meta’s interest to create a trustworthy environment to remain relevant to the audience it serves," he said. Somanathan also adds that with Meta's move in place, other platforms may ramp up on fact-checking due to the hole left by Meta.

"When platforms abdicate the responsibility to self regulate, it opens them up to state regulations, coupled with independent observers stepping in to review and report fake news. It’s not just the fake news, the lack of oversight will accelerate the scam instances leaving the users of the platform vulnerable to attacks," he said. 

The more likely scenario is that other players will follow suit, said Monks' Iucksch, adding that the newcomers that try to zag are usually very niche. "One way of looking at it is that Meta is adjusting itself to an imminent change in the regulatory environment in the US. As other companies see this coming to pass, they will also relax some measures that can be perceived as left-leaning censorship. Nick Clegg's departure and the Meta board's reshuffle are very clear signs pointing this way."

Related articles:

Meta deletes AI-generated accounts as consumers express concern
Meta's new video AI model for dummies: 101 on if it could take on OpenAI's Sora