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Muskification
Advertisers brace as Meta adopts X’s free speech playbook—less moderation, more uncertainty, and tougher brand safety calls.
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The Top Three 🏆
The industry’s most important stories today.
🥇 WHAT META’S ‘FREE SPEECH’ PIVOT MEANS FOR MARKETERS
Yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg announced Meta’s pivot to Musk-style “free speech” and content removal policies. While these changes are sparking debate, a great think-piece up on Digiday today says advertisers aren’t hitting the panic button—yet.
For now, marketers are in wait-and-see mode, pushing for clarity on what Meta will still moderate. So far, Mark Zuckerberg’s vague assurances leave more questions than answers. more
Marketers told Digiday they get the political calculus but worry about its ripple effects.
Musk’s X is a cautionary tale: Its hands-off approach has amplified misinformation, turning the platform into a battleground of unchecked content and driving brands to pull spend entirely.
But Meta operates on a different scale. As a commercially driven ad giant, it’s too valuable for most brands to abandon outright.
The piece suggests advertisers now must adapt, focusing on keeping ads away from harmful content rather than avoiding controversy entirely.
Welcome to the Muskification of media: where engagement trumps accuracy, and platforms shape public discourse without oversight. 🎯 For marketers, it’s not just about brand safety anymore—it’s about navigating an unpredictable new reality.
🥈 TIKTOK PUSHES USERS TO LEMON8
TikTok's sister app, Lemon8, has been sponsoring posts on TikTok to push users to migrate to the app as a potential U.S. ban looms. The ban law, however, applies to other apps owned by TikTok's Chinese parent ByteDance, including Lemon8. more
Reports suggest ByteDance could be betting that regulators and app stores are so focused on TikTok that they may overlook its other apps.
ByteDance has also released an app called Melolo featuring short dramas, TV and movies on Google’s app store. The app quietly launched in November. more
🥉 NEW REDDIT TOOLS FOR BRANDS
Reddit has announced new features for businesses, including Reddit Pro Trends, which lets companies monitor real-time conversations on the platform about their brand, products, industry, and more. more
The new “Trends” tab tracks keywords and phrases, providing a visualization of conversation volume, relevant communities, and related discussions for about 100,000 “smart” keywords.
Reddit is also introducing AMA Ads, letting businesses promote Ask Me Anything (AMA) Q&A sessions directly from the ad dashboard and track RSVP numbers for these interactive events.
OPINION:
Will Meta’s revised approach to moderation impact its ad business?
by Andrew Hutchinson, Social Media Today
Will Meta’s decision this week to loosen its moderation rules and get rid of fact-checking make Facebook and Instagram less brand safe as a result?
That seems to be what happened on X following Elon Musk’s moves to reduce internal content moderation staff in favor of user-sourced Community Notes, with various reports and investigations suggesting that the platform is no longer a safe place for brands to display their messages. Following these moves, X’s ad revenue intake has declined by around 60%.
A similar scenario could play out for Meta, according to a wave of industry commentary on the news. But there are key differences between Meta and X that could affect how the situation unrolls.
For starters, part of X’s problem in this respect has been Musk himself, and his propensity to generate headlines with his own statements and stances. Which is also Musk’s strength, in that he’s effectively the reason why his companies don’t need to pay for ads, because Elon is a walking promotional department within himself.
But at X, with Elon taking increasingly controversial and divisive stances, while also being the platform’s most followed user, the association between these views and the app has likely hurt the platform’s reputation more than Meta’s announced changes will.
Though at the same time, Meta’s changes are controversial, and they will similarly lead to more harmful content being shown to users in its apps.
For example, based on the latest updates to Meta’s Hateful Conduct policy, which were released today:
Meta will no longer outright ban all use of slurs used to attack people on the basis of “their protected characteristics.” Protected characteristics include race, ethnicity and gender identity. So essentially, Meta has removed a clause that might stop people being targeted with terms based specifically on these elements.
Meta will now allow people to use terms relating to sex or gender, even when used in an insulting way, within discussions relating to political or religious topics, “such as when discussing transgender rights, immigration, or homosexuality.” So users will be allowed to use potentially harmful terms within these conversations, with Meta no longer looking to contextualize such, as it has in the recent past.
There have also been various changes designed to simplify the rules and facilitate more leeway around potentially insulting terms. Meta has also removed restrictions on comments that target people based on the suggestion, for example, that they may have spread COVID-19 (though this is now largely outdated either way).
Meta’s also looking to take a more hands off approach, in general, within discussions around things like immigration and gender identity, which are the subject of frequent political discourse and debate.
Essentially, Meta’s now moved to reduce its rules to allow for more kinds of speech, while the reduction of internal moderation and external fact-checking staff will also lead to more of these comments seeing increased exposure in the app either way. Which means that there are going to be more offensive, harmful posts shown to more people in its apps.
Which Zuck himself acknowledges.
In his overview of the update, Zuckerberg explained that:
“The reality is that this is a trade-off. It means we’re going to catch less bad stuff, but we’ll also reduce the number of innocent people’s posts and accounts that we accidentally take down.”
So more harmful posts will get through, and with over 3 billion daily active users, the scope of potential harm in this respect is significantly higher than it is on X.
So logically, that should see more advertisers reconsidering their approach to Facebook and IG, like they did with X. Though I suspect that we won’t see the same backlash.
Because Facebook and Instagram do provide such broad reach, because they each have such huge audiences, and the potential of that is just too significant to cut out for many brands. So while it was relatively easy to take a moral stance on X, which has a fraction of Meta’s audience, I just don’t see brands being as willing to do the same this time around.
But realistically, that is what should happen. There should be the same types of critical reports around Meta ad placement, and the impacts that these changes will have for brands, because there will be impacts, the same as there were on X, and Meta should face the same scrutiny that X has for allowing such.
And again, it’ll be worse on Facebook and Instagram, based on exposure potential alone. The relative harms here will be significant.
So, should you be reconsidering your approach to social media ads as a result? Yes, you probably should, but I doubt that the moral outrage will reach the same levels this time around.
Andrew Hutchinson is the Content and Social Media Manager for SocialMediaToday.com. Be sure to check them out and subscribe to their newsletter for the latest social media news, trends, & tips in your inbox.
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Today’s Other News ☑︎
Everything else that matters.
Advertising 📣
🥳 Big win for insights and measurement: Amazon Ads announced that brands using its data clean room, Amazon Marketing Cloud, can now analyze 5 years of consumer shopping data, up from just 13 months. more
A bug in Google Ads’ rollout of an upcoming feature is letting some advertisers pause, enable, or remove conversion assets at the asset group level for Performance Max campaigns. An Ads Liaison confirmed the issue and said it’s being addressed. more
Advertisers can now track if Amazon streaming ads drive sales at Walmart and Target. A new partnership between retail media tech companies Stackline and Gigi lets brands use first-party data to create targeted audiences and measure ad performance through Amazon Marketing Cloud and AWS Clean Rooms. more
Google is testing local ads in the local pack without review stars. Typically, sponsored results show review stars, but in some cases, the review stars are removed from these ads in the local pack. more
TikTok 🎵
TikTok’s U.S. agency lead, Jack Bamberger, reportedly left the company on January 3. more
🎯 With growing challenges ahead, it’s unclear if TikTok plans to replace him, leaving agencies in the dark as the January 19 ban approaches.
TikTok creators are reportedly adjusting brand partnership contracts to protect against the potential shutdown of the platform. Many are removing force majeure clauses that could breach contracts if TikTok is banned, while also negotiating alternative posting plans on other platforms. more
Jumping on the latest viral trend? 40% of consumers support when brands engage in viral trends, but a third find it embarrassing. more
And don't miss the window—brands need to act within 24-48 hours for trend participation to be effective.
Meta is currently testing turning users' selfies into custom AI-generated images and serving them back in ads. more
As a Reddit user explained: “Used Meta AI to edit a selfie, now Instagram is using my face on ads targeted at me.” 🫠 Dark times.
Marketing Tool of the Day 🔨
Cool stuff we found on the web (not a paid placement)
Ever feel like every Google search result now sounds… off? That’s AI content everywhere. Makes it harder to find stuff written by actual humans.
This nifty (and free) Chrome extension filters Google results to show only pre-2023 content—the days when real humans wrote most of what you found.
One-click filter to get rid of AI-generated clutter
Easily dig up human-created content for those deep-dive campaigns
Works right on Google, no slowdown or weird setup
Might be worth a try if you're tired of sorting through AI fluff when you just want solid, human-sourced info.
Today’s Trivia Question 🧠
Tap your guess and you could win!
Based on current trends, when will Threads will overtake X/Twitter in daily active users? |
🎁 Everyone who guesses will be entered in our monthly draw for a full year of our Premium Newsletter free! Congratulations to David L who won December’s draw!
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