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Meta’s New Moderation: Back to the Roots or the End of Advertising? 

New Meta Moderation

We bet your team’s already had a couple of meetings about Meta’s new policies. Or at least you discussed it in private chats, right? That’s probably the most controversial topic in the media buying community today: opinions are so different that even advertising experts don’t know how to feel about it. Plus, it’s totally unclear how the new content moderation policy will actually work.

Of course, we can’t foresee the future, too (unfortunately). So, it makes sense to get ready for just anything: from brands leaving Facebook and Instagram forever to a new era of Meta Ads, free from the  fear of confusing bans.

In this piece, we will give you both raw facts and media buyers’ opinions.


What Actually Happened?

On January 7, 2025, Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg went online with a 5-minute long video where he announced that Meta will change their moderation policies. 

Here are the main points to highlight from his speech.

Meta’s done with fact-checking 

Before, Meta’s posts were checked by the third-party companies. It worked like this: 

  1. Someone creates a post about, say, aliens.
  2. Meta’s algorithms or ordinary users (evidently, The X-files anti-fans!) flag this post as ‘misleading’.
  3. The poor flagged post is then sent to an independent fact-checker – one of the several companies certified by the International Fact-Checking Network.
  4. Fact checkers dive in the information in the post, strictly say aliens don’t exist, and rate a post as false. 
  5. Then Meta reduces the posts’ visibility, or adds some labels to warn users.
  6. If a user, a brand, or a community keeps sending posts that annoy fact-checkers, the account resulted in a permanent ban. 

The new moderation rules imply no more fact-checking. Instead, Zuck decided to introduce so-called Community Notes. It means that regular users will add extra clarifying information to posts, like they already do at X (Twitter).

If Meta completely copies the X Community Notes approach, it means that all posts, including ads, are at risk of having undeletable comments.

Facebook Ads

Political content is now okay

Posts about politics were not under a ban, in fact. However, Meta restricted their visibility, so it was unlikely to gain many views on topics related to elections, gender identity questions, or LGBTQ+ community.

Now, such posts are more visible, and users can decide on how much of such content they want to see: 

Meta - Post- political content

Controversial content won’t be banned

When we say controversial, we actually mean ‘offensive’. As Zuckerberg puts it, Meta needed to bring back the freedom of speech – even if this free speech is full of hate. 

For example, according to the new Meta guidelines, it’s now okay to say on Facebook, Instagram, or Threads that being a part of LGBTQ+ is a kind of a mental condition.

Social TrafficType

What Does it All Mean For Users and Advertisers?

On the first glance, something made for the sake of freedom of speech can’t be that bad. But will it be really so? And, another curious question – was it totally okay before? 

What was wrong with fact-checking?

Media buyers, who run FB ads, often complain about bans. Not all of them, though: for example, the owner of the Telegram channel ‘Once in Arbitrage’ hasn’t experience much of a problem:

In my projects, I rarely get bans due to censorship or moderation mistakes. The recent ban was related to iGaming ads, but this was likely due to the brand’s specifics, not FB moderation. There were no such problems with the other projects. Usually, the ads work clearly and stably. So, thanks to proper setup and approach, bans do not significantly affect the results.

However, the others get in bigger trouble with bans. Sometimes, there is even no clear reason for that – and an account gets suspended forever in a blink of an eye. In some cases, advertisers caught bans exactly due to fact checking – with no actual understanding of even WHICH fact was checked and disliked that much.

Here is what one of our partners shared with us:

‘I got a message saying my ad had a fact-checking issue. But this was nothing but a design studio ad! What could be misleading or false there? The message suggested that I contacted those third-party checkers who gave this strange verdict, but it said nothing about WHO was this checking company! This was totally ridiculous.’

To our surprise, he wasn’t the only one! Several other media buyers nodded to agree:

‘I got flagged for misleading, but my ad was simply saying that an online store had a New Year sale.’

Some stories are even sadder:

‘I got a permanent ban on my advertising account due to fact checkers. Why? Because I posted a funny picture with an animal helping a human guy, and they said it was misleading. Several years passed, and this fact-checking flag resulted in an account ban, so now I can’t promote my business on Facebook’.

So, it seems fact-checking didn’t work that fine. But will the new rules become a breath of fresh air? 

Facebook Ads Manager mistakes

Is something wrong with Community Notes?

The biggest problem about Meta Community Notes right now is that nobody knows how they will work. Big chances are, though, that Zuck will just copy this from X – and if so, we probably got a problem, officer.

X advertisers can hide comments to ad posts. However, Community Notes are always visible – and can become pretty frustrating for brands. Here are a couple of examples:

X - Community Notes
meta - community notes posts

If you dig around on the Internet, you’ll see such loud statements as ‘X’s Community Notes is the best thing Elon Musk ever did’. Of course, people saying that are not advertisers – but users, the ones we target and try to inspire to convert. 

Meanwhile, affiliate marketers and media buyers are worried. Notes, based on people’s opinions instead of raw facts, might ruin ad campaigns and incline big brands to leave Facebook and Instagram. According to the owner of the ‘Once in Arbitrage’ channel, you need to be careful with the creatives that get too many negative notes:

‘Yes, this can become a problem for brand reputation. Previously, negative comments could be hidden or deleted. Now, if such comments remain, they create reputational risks. For example, if a creative gathers too much of the negative feedback, the best tactic is to restart it to remove the harmful impact. This implies extra work for marketers and doesn’t make things easier.’

What’s more, not only brands might leave Meta – and here is why, in the next part.


Why political and controversial content might be harmful?

According to Meta, this move is actually supposed to reduce moderation mistakes – when Facebook or Telegram or Threads posts are deleted accidentally, just like in the stories we posted above. So, marketers can pop open a bottle of champagne?…

Not yet, and here are two reasons why.

  1. Users might begin leaving the platform. According to Google Trends, users began to actively search for something like ‘Facebook alternatives’ or ‘how to delete all Facebook photos’. However, not everyone thinks it will become an issue: as the ‘Once in Arbitrage’ owner puts it, ‘any changes will be hardly noticeable, and media buyers won’t feel it. Traffic volume will likely stay the same, and ad campaigns will continue without major changes.’
  1. Companies are worried about brand-safety. This point is much more disturbing: the novel rules mean their ads might appear next to unwanted content. Such concerns remain even though Alex Shulz, Meta’s CMO, said that ‘Facebook would maintain its brand safety tools that allow companies some control over the kinds of content their ads appear next to’ in his interview to Business Insider.
Types of Traffic Sources for Media Buyers

So, Is It High Time You Left Facebook?

The truth is that we still don’t know how exactly these new rules will work and impact ads. While some marketers are worried, other media buyers don’t think this might be harmful or useful in any way: the only thing that matters is performance, for them.

For example, here is what our partner said:

Facebook has become worse over the time, and I see traffic shifting to other platforms. So I don’t like any of FB updates: each update still leads to our ad accounts bans, and a worse campaign performance. While I can handle the bans, I’m still worried about the profits: I was able to make 2x-3x profit in the last few years, but now I struggle to earn at least 60%-70% of my budget. And, the traffic quality drops with each update, too.

Another partner kinda confirmed it:

‘Some of my colleagues even stopped Meta advertising, because the Price Per Lead went too high and it got hard for them to profit.’

At the same time, many brands don’t see any problems with Meta ads – and are not going to leave, if the performance remains the same. Indeed, someone did make Meta the second largest market for digital advertising in the USA, right? As Shamsul Chowdhury, VP of paid social at Jellyfish agency, said in his interview to Business Insider, 

‘For us, Meta is the next-best performer (after Google), as far as ROI is concerned.’

The owner of ‘Once in Arbitrage’ agrees:

‘New censorship rules could be beneficial in the long run. Initially, there might be disruptions in ad campaigns until things settle down. But once processes are adjusted, advertisers will only benefit from these changes. The key is to wait and adapt. In the end, it can expand advertising opportunities and provide more options for working with traffic.’


Summary

So, it seems that it’s too early to make any conclusions. The novel policies might make media buyers’ life easier – as well as, on the contrary, create some difficulties. The main concerns relate to brand safety, and there is no 100% evidence that it will be hurt or still protected.

What’s left for media buyers is to patiently wait and see what happens next. Or forget about it, and just run Social Traffic campaigns at PropellerAds meanwhile. It brings you fresh and converting traffic from socials including Facebook, but saves you from handling the bans and diving into the moderation rules. 

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