Mark Zuckerberg’s unexpected ‘free speech’ overhaul of Meta content moderation has sparked concerns among advertisers that it will lead to an influx of harmful content and misinformation across the board social media platform.

Several advertising bosses have told the Financial Times that Meta’s move is to end this fact-checking program and loosening hate speech policies could cost the platform, where sales represent most of its $135bn in annual sales, if brands fear their adverts could run next to toxic content.

“Some brands will assess their plans carefully and this will undoubtedly become a commercial puzzle for both sides,” said Fergus McCallum, boss of advertising agency TBWA\MCR.

The $1.5tn company’s drastic weakening of its online content marks an escalation in Zuckerberg’s recent push to favor president-elect Donald Trump and his new right-hand man Elon Musk. .

In just a few days, he has seen him replace Meta’s global policy chief Nick Clegg with prominent Republican ally Joel Kaplan, as well as appoint martial arts titan and Trump friend Dana White to the board. this. On Friday, the content company announced it was also ending its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts, while Zuckerberg appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast to say that corporations have become “culturally neutered” and need more “masculine energy” and to “celebrate aggression a little more”.

But the move to ditch professional fact-checkers in favor of a ‘community notes’ approach pioneered by Musk’s X – where users themselves flag false information – has baffled the advertising industry which provides brand safety concerns with rivals X and TikTok in recent years.

Meta has long dominated marketing spending alongside Google, building a reputation as a relatively safe haven, with high return-on-investment and close relationships with major brands. In contrast, X was hit by a exodus of merchants on moderation concerns following Musk’s purchase of the platform two years ago, which hurt its revenues.

“Meta has done a great job of cleaning up the worst excesses of toxic content and if their new policies eliminate it, advertisers will be found and punished immediately,” said Richard Exon. , founder of advertising agency Joint.

In X, community notes allow users to offer “add context” below other people’s posts, although this only appears if a consensus among other contributors “comes from different point of view” agrees that it helps.

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

Lou Paskalis, chief executive of marketing consultancy AJL Advisory and a former media executive at Bank of America, said Meta’s community notes shift “creates headwinds for risk-averse marketers”, adding that some ” will reduce their trust” in Meta as a result.

Some advertising executives described feeling “nervous” and sought more information from the platform about exactly how to implement the changes.

“Brands are entering a new world where the established rules of operation are no longer reliable,” said Patrick Reid, chief executive of the Imagination group, the advertising creative agency.

Concerns were also raised about Meta’s plans to change its systems to “dramatically reduce” the amount of content its automated filters remove from its platforms.

That includes removing restrictions on topics such as immigration and gender, to focus its systems on “illegal and serious violations”, such as terrorism, child exploitation and fraud, as well as content related to suicide, self-harm and eating disorders. Zuckerberg himself admitted that its systems can now catch “less bad things”.

Some industry executives are more skeptical that the move will create much of a fallout for Meta’s ad business. “I don’t think advertisers care as long as the platform works – but they do if the content becomes more polarised,” said a major advertising agency boss.

Alex Cheeseman, head of UK business, Outbrain, said that “the cold, hard truth is that advertisers will only care if it hurts their numbers. If performance stays consistent, no one will lose- sleep on ‘where’ or ‘how’ to see their ads”.

At the Consumer Electronics Show this week, Meta’s chief marketing officer Alex Schultz said the company’s brand safety tools remain in place, and the company is “not in a rush” to launch to provide advertisers. a “time to adjust and understand”. Nicola Mendelsohn, head of Meta’s global business group, wrote in a LinkedIn post that the company will continue to invest in safety tools for advertisers.

Meta’s policy changed quickly which divided opinion within the company. One person said some staff saw the moderation updates as recurring important protections, but more employees were “scared to really speak up” because Meta had gone through several bursts of layoffs since the pandemic.

Another employee said that the internal reaction to the transition to community notes was mostly positive, especially because fact-checking was seen as a “thankless” task “because one side or the other should accuse you of taking sides”.

Those who know Zuckerberg say he has long been an advocate of free speech, but his positions have been shaped by political and public pressure over the years.

“It’s becoming a trend,” said Katie Harbath, a former policy director who worked on Meta’s election strategy for a decade. “After every major election since 2016, Mark has made these big changes — going where the social and regulatory winds are. This is another one of those changes.”

Zuckerberg first introduced third-party fact-checking as part of a raft of measures in late 2016 designed to address criticism of Facebook’s misinformation. But this week Zuckerberg blamed governments and “legacy media” for pushing his company to “censor more”, and accused fact-checkers of being “very politically biased”.

Linda Yaccarino, the chief executive of X, said in a conference on Tuesday: “Mark, Meta, welcome to the party”.

Asked about Meta’s recent changes at a press conference, Trump said he thought the tech group had “come too far”, adding that Zuckerberg had “probably” responded to the threats. which he had done before against him.

On the campaign trail, Trump threatened to jail the social media chief for alleged election meddling and called his company “the enemy of the people” for alleged censorship.

Experts see Zuckerberg’s move as much a business decision as it is an ideological one.

Meta’s chief has poured billions of dollars into his ambitions to become a “leader” in artificial intelligence, and has publicly promoted his open source approach to AI as regulators around the world circle the space.

“The big reason why Mark saw the influence that Elon, (venture capitalists Marc) Andreessen and (David) Sacks had on Trump and wanted to make sure he was in that mix,” Harbath said.

The move also comes ahead of the tech group facing a major antitrust trial in April. The Federal Trade Commission accused the social media group of maintaining monopoly power and using a “buy or bury” strategy to neutralize competitors, and sought to force the company to drop the acquisition. on Instagram and WhatsApp.

“In order not to break up the company through antitrust actions, which he knows can be influenced by whoever is in power in Washington, Zuckerberg must be a chameleon,” said David Evan Harris, a University of California chancellor’s public scholarship. , Berkeley and former Meta staff.

Additional reporting by Cristina Criddle in San Francisco and Clara Murray in London