Commentary

Marketers Must Become More Self-Reliant

Meta may have stopped fact-checking earlier this month, but it didn't do a good job when it was still on the case, according to a recent Newsguard analysis of Q4 Meta content. As Mashable just reported, Meta flagged as false only 14% of sampled posts of Russian, Chinese, and Iranian disinformation.  

Newsguard’s analysis highlights the challenges that Meta (and other social media platforms) face in moderating content, and the need for more robust measures to combat disinformation effectively.

And of course now Meta is now doing even less (effectively none) than it did during Q4 of 2024. Instead, the company is going to rely on you and me to flag content as misinformation (or worse). If accepted as false or inappropriate, flagged posts will have a little warning with it to “say it ain’t so,” but the content itself remains visible.

All of this is part of what the New York Times this week called Meta’s “embrace of the Trump administration.”  In a recent town hall, CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that Meta now has “an opportunity to have a productive partnership with the United States government.” He continued: “The government can sort of be actively opposing you, trying to get in the way and add a lot of friction, or can be actively trying to help you break down barriers to help you.”

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And thus we see many companies going backward on important promises and business decisions, in a wholesale sellout to the wishes of “the government."

The implications of Meta’s decision is  that, as an advertiser, you are more and more on your own. Many agencies are deeply in bed with the tech giants through principal media and tech ecosystem commitments that are financially beneficial to its operators -- that is, the agencies. If an advertiser is looking for impartial and transparent advice, don’t ask the platforms or the agencies. Instead, you will have to have your own smart people on staff that can guide your investment.

The same goes for brand safety. As a marketer, you will have to invest in brand safety tech and independent monitoring service providers to ensure your ad appears as intended, or at all.

All of this explains the well-reported rise of independent agencies. In a world where you have to rely on yourself for things that you used to rely on agencies for -- and where volume matters less and smart people plus smart tech matters more -- it’s less clear how useful a large agency holding company can be. Maybe that’s the silver lining in the onslaught of platforms and media companies capitulating to “the government.”

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