Meta adopts X’s Community Notes: what it means for business

With a Donald Trump presidency just days away in the US, Meta has announced changes to content moderation on its platforms and said it will adopt X-like Community Notes. This is being seen as the tech giant’s latest bow to the incoming Republican administration.

What this means is that the company will no longer decide what the ‘truth’ is on their platform. Instead, they will entrust users with this responsibility, like Elon Musk did.

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Meta, on Tuesday released a video explaining this move, using some of the language that conservatives have long used to criticise his company. He said it was time to prioritise “free expression” and that fact-checkers had become “politically biased”.

But this is not just a social media debate or a barrage of memes accusing Zuckerberg of ripping off Musk. It also has consequences for Meta’s businesses.

EU confrontation: To start with, this move will not go down well with the European Union, as they are supporters of content moderation. They also have new powers in the form of their new Digital Services Act.

Meta is already in troubled waters with the EU for its policies and faces multiple fines and cases.

Increased harmful content: Reduced moderation is likely to give rise to harmful content being shown to users, potentially damaging Meta’s reputation and deterring advertisers.Also Read: Disinformation experts slam Meta decision to end US fact-checking

Advertisers: When Musk removed content moderation from X, brands felt vulnerable to negative messaging and fled the platform. This may impact Meta, too, although not as strongly. The platform has big advertisers, privy to and impacted by political pressures, but it also has a big number of smaller brands that favour its apps. These are unlikely to remove themselves from Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp.

With reduced moderation, there is a higher likelihood of hate speech, violence or explicit content, misinformation and disinformation. As a result, advertisers may worry that their ads will appear next to such content.