Mark Zuckerberg, Meta‘s boss, has said he’s opening his Facebook and Instagram to free speech and no longer managing what advertisers’ spots appear alongside postings. Advertisers are concerned.
Advertisers have expressed concerns over the past few weeks—in meetings with Meta as well as with their own agency partners—that Meta‘s tools might not be enough to stop ads from showing up near offensive content as the new content-moderation approach comes into effect, and that user feeds could become inundated with misinformation.
Advertisers’ concerns are wholly unfounded. Any serious risk is entirely in their own timid imaginations. There always will be folks who manufacture objections and smears based on the appearance of an ad alongside a posting that someone decides to find objectionable. As long as those timid ones accede to those someones’ manufactured ire, their reputation—the safety of their brand—will be in the wind. Were they to find, instead, the backbone to ignore the someones and their artificial beefs, those someones would remain the vast minority of viewers, potential customers, and customers who might see the pairing, and the advertisers’ brand safety would remain soundly tied to the quality of their product and to nothing else.
The someones are just bullies, and they’re best dealt with by ignoring them and second best dealt with by directly confronting them and pushing back, hard. Their mis- and disinformation is best handled, not by running away from it, but by answering it with actual facts and logic.