Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has sought to calm key advertisers following its decision to scrap third-party fact-checking in the United States.
Senior executives led by Nicola Mendelsohn, Meta’s head of global business, have held a series of meetings over recent days to address concerns about brand safety and content moderation.
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s founder, earlier this month announced an end to the platform’s long-standing US fact-checking partnership and signalled a new reliance on users to flag misinformation. Under the revised policy, the company will introduce “community notes”, mirroring an approach adopted by Elon Musk at X. Zuckerberg defended the shift during an eight-minute video statement, claiming that external fact-checking had led to “too many mistakes and too much censorship”.
Mendelsohn, speaking in Davos at the World Economic Forum, insisted Meta was not abandoning its commitment to brand safety. “There is no change. Absolutely no change. It is business as usual,” she said. She emphasised Meta’s deep investment in “suitability tools” that allow advertisers to avoid being placed next to political or socially sensitive content, adding that “Advertisers can choose where they do or they don’t want to place their ads.”
The move comes against a backdrop of shrinking advertising revenues at rival X, which experienced a steep decline from an estimated US$4.5 billion in 2022 to US$2.2 billion in 2023 amid controversy over Musk’s content moderation approach.
Mendelsohn framed Meta’s pivot as “moving back to our roots”, stressing that the platform’s original mission was to enable free expression and open debate. She played down the risk of brand damage, arguing that, while the company may be “moving faster” in its changes, it remains committed to its “core DNA”.
In addition to dropping US fact-checking, Zuckerberg announced plans to tweak algorithms to once again promote political posts, reversing a previous policy that had intentionally sidelined such content.
Separately, Meta disclosed that it would also be scrapping its diversity, equity and inclusion hiring policies, citing a “shifting legal and policy landscape” in a statement released ahead of Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration.
