Advertisers may not like Meta’s “Free Speech” overhaul, but does it matter?

Much has been made of Mark Zuckerberg’s suddenness. tight courtship abandoning fact-checking in favor of incoming Trump administration-X-style crowdsourcing (nobody cared about fact-checking, but community records it doesn’t look any better); Goes to Fox News and Joe Rogan say Facebook is already about free speech; relaxes content restrictions so that it is now acceptable to post on Facebook that gay people are mentally ill.

Listening to him, the hard line doesn’t feel sincere, because Zuckerberg will do whatever is politically expedient at any moment. Facebook is a private company and can decide what content isn’t allowed on its services — just as Twitter executives discussed requests from the White House to remove content, Facebook can leave whatever it wants. But during his first administration, President Trump repeatedly threatened Send Zuckerberg to jail Facebook censored conservative content, and Meta still faced an FTC antitrust trial in April. Zuckerberg’s proposals seem like a ploy to stave off all of Meta’s problems for a few years.

And Zuckerberg is lucky that Facebook is one of the most effective advertising products ever created, which puts him in an enviable position. It was easy for advertisers to dismiss Twitter (now X) because it’s never been a great place to advertise — the service doesn’t require real names like Facebook, and it’s never collected much useful data about its users. It’s a big part of why FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan went after Meta in the first place—it consolidated its power by buying or copying competitors. Whatever you think of Zuckerberg, he is one of the best businessmen in recent history.

Big brands like Dell or Coca-Cola advertise on Twitter to reach the coastal elite, while Facebook has always been successful with local, small businesses because they can target a sandal ad directly to the right person and get almost guaranteed revenue – 1 put $2 earn $2 on facebook ads. That’s why Facebook, Google and Amazon now count more than half of the entire digital advertising market. They are incredibly effective. Compared to Meta’s more than 3 billion users, X has always been small with around 300 million active users; even bigger than Snapchat and Pinterest X. Boycotts of Meta won’t happen like they did 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 appear to be implicitly endorsing such content by advertising on a platform that allows it—when you think of Diet Coke, the company wants you to imagine the warmth of polar bears and polar bears. Christmas; Volkswagen no longer wants to be associated with Hitler and so on and so forth. To be sure, Meta doesn’t get rid of content moderation entirely, but it will be less restrictive.

There is a new one article in the year Financial Times It assesses the potential adverse effect of Meta’s new position. Here is an excerpt:

Critics argue that crowdsourced fact-checking efforts are slower than professional, trained individuals to label lies and conspiracies and can be manipulated by users.

Lou Pascalis, CEO of marketing consultancy AJL Advisory and a former head of media at Bank of America, said the change in Meta’s community record “creates headwinds for risk-averse marketers” and will eventually cause some to “lose confidence” in Meta.

Other advertising executives described feeling “nervous” and were looking for more information from the platform about exactly how the changes would be implemented.

“Brands are entering a new world where established business rules can no longer be trusted,” said Patrick Reid, chief executive of marketing agency Imagination.

Meta needs to sue advertisers to keep spending money on their platform Mask did with X? Probably not. After all, money talks and advertisers will continue to advertise on Facebook and Instagram if they still see a positive return on their investment. It’s the same with CEOs of big companies – investors forgive many sins when they print money for their companies.

Advertisers likely won’t opt ​​out of Meta, but that shouldn’t be interpreted as an endorsement of Zuckerberg’s actions. They won’t give up the Meta because it will hurt their bottom line.