January 8, 2025 - 6:00pm

On Tuesday, America’s favourite newly-permed CEO and bona fide chill-guy Mark Zuckerberg struck another blow to “Big Woke”. He announced that Meta will pivot to a Musk-inspired, community-driven moderation approach. This move marks yet another data point in Silicon Valley’s ongoing vibe shift away from progressivism, ahead of Trump’s second term. True to form, Zuck continues to follow the cultural winds and with social media platforms at a crossroads, Meta’s recalibration could reignite its cultural relevance.

Meta is abandoning third-party fact-checking for a “Community Notes” system, borrowing from Trump-ally Elon Musk’s playbook on X. No longer the arbiter of “what’s real”, Meta will now place that responsibility on users, transforming annotations into a new form of viral content as we’ve seen numerous times on X. But this isn’t just about political expediency, it’s also a survival strategy. With the boot of legacy media and governmental oversight no longer on its neck, Meta could spend more time innovating on other parts of its business. In other words, to echo Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong, Meta is a tech company, not a culture war company — for now, at least — and it shouldn’t be wasting brain power determining if the speech on their platform is sufficiently politically sensitive.

The timing is also strategic given the looming TikTok ban, which could displace millions of creators and their audiences. If engagement on Instagram and Facebook goes up as a result of moderation changes, Meta could position Instragram Reels as the refuge for this exodus in a landscape where many creators are questioning whether they should throw in the towel altogether, feeling like there are no platform alternatives. It might even ultimately position itself as more appealing, as TikTok itself is known for its draconian moderation policies. Zuckerberg specifically mentioned immigration and gender as two topics that would now be free from fact-checking moderation. This could open the floodgates to other contentious issues, making the Meta free-for-all far more appealing than a strict TikTok.

But what will the fact-checkers be replaced by? Meta is rolling out AI integration, as we saw last week when it suggested it would pump platforms full of synthetic profiles. By harnessing AI’s ability to generate personalised content, simulate vibrant user interactions, and adapt dynamically to user preferences, Meta has the potential to redefine what a social platform is. Executed effectively, AI could transform Meta into a hive of constant activity — an engagement machine! — in a world jones-ing for TikTok levels of so-called “digital fentanyl”.

What does this mean, exactly? On the content roll-out side, it means Character.AI-style companions, already a proven winner, if the glut of lawsuits from the loved one’s of addicted users against each company means anything. Culture war content carefully calibrated to your specific emotional triggers and AI-generated “hot takes” — a world where AI itself has a say in the zeitgeist. And then there’s data: as users become less inhibited, they will feed Meta even more data about their preferences.

As we’ve seen with platforms like Gab, and even to some extent X, less moderation doesn’t only drive engagement, it increases administrative headaches. Some moderation is good and keeps people in check. Without it, you risk poisoning the well by increasing polarisation to almost comical degrees and creating an echo chamber. An echo chamber that’s no longer a haven for free speech or a hot spot for debate, no matter how meaningless those debates are, but irritating to ordinary users. In other words, its own form of “slop”.

For those who left Facebook (less so Instagram) because of heavy-handed moderation, the pendulum swinging too far the other way could leave them equally disenchanted. By leaning into AI-driven strategies and doubling down on controversial content, Meta could ultimately redefine Facebook, not just as a Trump-friendly social media offering or competitor to TikTok and X, but by reclaiming its relevance.


Katherine Dee is a writer. To read more of her work, visit defaultfriend.substack.com.

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