The future of the social… is in the hands of the many

"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”, Mark Zuckerberg said in his announcement of upcoming changes to moderation at Meta.

An unfairly blocked account or inexplicably removed post must be frustrating, I get it. But let's get into the “bad stuff” that Zuckerberg is letting his guard down against, and what exactly that means for users and brands.

By now we’ve all heard the news that Meta is changing its moderation policy to be more like X. Throwing out third-party fact-checking and replicating something similar to Elon Musk’s Community Notes. Essentially, this puts moderation into the hands of the users who will collectively contribute further context on false/misleading content. Think mob rule vs fact checking.

Obvious political motivations aside, the stated intention by Mark Zuckerberg in his announcement video is to allow more freedom of speech. The plan is to move away from biased censorship which leaves inoffensive users in “Facebook jail” or inexplicably shadow banned.

Freedom of speech sounds lovely on the surface, but when that includes freedom to share hateful and offensive content without consequence, it’s actually quite terrifying. X is the prime example for what can happen to a platform when users are left to rule without third-party moderation. Is this the brave new world we want?

Becoming more like X is not necessarily desirable. The platform where the more polarising a piece of content is, the more engagement it will drive. A platform whose metrics not only accommodate but can often reward hate - and it’s a lot easier to be hateful than it is insightful.

X has lost 75 per cent of its value since Elon Musk took over. Brands have pulled major funding from the platform, not only out of protest against Musk’s views, but also an act of self-preservation. The very real danger for brands is that their content could show up sandwiched in a feed of homophobic, misogynistic, racist, transphobic and xenophobic discourse. Whilst X representatives can guarantee your ads won’t run before or after hateful content, they have no control over where your content will show up organically. I suspect Meta will have similar control over what content brand’s comms show up next to organically.

There was a small time window, where we could hope that, in contrast to X, Meta would take a sterner stance on hate speech policies despite the introduction of community notes. However, it gets bleaker, especially for specific minority groups. For example, the new content moderation policy does not protect the LGBTQ+ community. The policy bans ridiculing a person’s mental health, however they do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation.

As a queer person myself, I saw the immediate ripple of fear these changes have spread through the community on Instagram. High profile LGBTQ+ individuals and organisations are speaking up loudly on the platform in protest. Munroe Bergdorf, Them and Gay Times are amongst major accounts spelling out exactly what the policy changes mean for the queer community and allies on Meta. Stonewall UK have also requested a meeting with Meta to express their concerns.

The new conduct policy puts a huge risk on the safety of queer creators. Brands working with these creators won’t be able to ensure that the additional exposure from partnerships won’t lead to additional harmful comments. The fact that online hate leads to real life harm, is a very true and tragic reality for the queer community - so whilst Mark Zuckerberg isn’t concerned about the “bad stuff”, I am. And brands should be too.

It’s really important that brands don’t back down on the progress that’s been made working in partnership with the LGBTQ+ community. Stand by your creators, and stand by your own brand values, you may have to work harder to defend them. Bluesky anyone?

Meg Anderson is a senior social strategist for BBH