21 Jan 2025

Meta’s Trust Gamble

In early January, Mark Zuckerberg announced Meta was removing restrictions on topics like immigration and gender, allowing for more politicised debate on its platforms and ending its third-party fact-checking program, moving to a Community Notes model.

Sam Ward
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In early January, Mark Zuckerberg announced Meta was removing restrictions on topics like immigration and gender, allowing for more politicised debate on its platforms and ending its third-party fact-checking program, moving to a Community Notes model.

In his rationale, he attempted to appeal to all 3 elements of our Trust model: Competence, Integrity, and Benevolence.

  • Competence: Zuckerberg argues that the system will be an improvement. The current system, he says, does not foster online safety; the “biases and perspectives” of third-party fact checkers mean “there could be a better way of achieving our original intention.”
  • Integrity: He portrays the change as consistent with his longstanding values, arguing this is “getting back to our roots around free expression.” He also admits past mistakes in terms of his approach, making use of the “blemish effect” (confess failures before promoting solutions to make yourself sound more honest and candid, and thus trustworthy).
  • Benevolence: He positions the move as a patriotic defence of American free speech, arguing “people across the spectrum believe that achieving the political outcomes they think matter is more important than every person having a voice. I think that’s dangerous.”

However, the move was met with widespread (centre/left) criticism, also on grounds of Competence, Integrity, and Benevolence.

  • Competence: Others claimed the approach was at best “naïve”, driving a rise in “dangerous misinformation on feeds.”
  • Integrity: Critics argued this wasn’t about values but about business, and political opportunism, continuing a trend of Meta policy flip-flopping to line up with the views of each new administration.
  • Benevolence: Another focus was the impact of these policy changes, removing protections for women (who can now be referred to as “property”) and transgender or non-binary people (who can now be referred to as “mentally ill”).

Meta’s gamble is that this move will appeal to the Trump administration and win back right-leaning members of the public concerned about bias/censorship on social media, without alienating users or advertisers.

Trump previously branded Facebook ‘an enemy of the people’, but this week gave Zuckerberg a prime seat at his inauguration. The best outcome: a more favourable regulatory environment for Meta’s revenue driving AI products.

Meta already had a trust problem

Even before this latest pivot, something wasn’t working for Meta.

Last year, we conducted Trust Analytics research in three major markets (USA, Germany, UK), examining informed public attitudes towards five major tech brands. Of these, Meta had the lowest trust scores, with the weakest scores in all three domains.

It is possible that Zuckerberg’s pivot will have a positive effect on these scores by showing that the company is responding to concerns on the right and working to improve its performance.

It is also possible that this will do little to change the minds of Meta’s skeptics, while alienating brand trusters. After all, people trust brands whose future behaviour they believe they can predict, and this move will have surprised many.

Integrity reflects whether audiences believe you have strong values, consistently applied. It is often the pillar overlooked by communications strategies, and it is the pillar where Meta performs most poorly.

If you are seen as easily swayed, all audiences may distrust you – even those who support your decision in principle.

Finally, it is worth noting that our latest UK Polarisation Tracker shows that third party fact checkers are among the most trusted sources for all audiences, even among the ‘Super Distruster’ cohort who are more opposed to censorship (below).

Analysis by NewsWhip showed that Meta’s pivot generated significantly more coverage among left-leaning sources, than right-leaning. i.e. Meta animated critics more than it energised supporters.

In terms of audience trust, Meta may have alienated people (and brands) without making many friends.

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