How Consumers View the Changes at Meta

A few weeks before Donald Trump took the oath of office for the second time, Meta (the owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) announced large changes to their platforms when it comes to content moderation, hate speech, and fact-checking. In a post titled “More Speech, Fewer Mistakes”, CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a video discussing some of the changes. These included (as titled by Meta):

• Ending Third Party Fact Checking Program, Moving to Community Notes

• Allowing More Speech

• A Personalized Approach to Political Content

• And while not in the post, the company also expressed its plans to move its content moderation team from California to Texas. 

Much of the coverage of these changes was less than flattering for the company, with many publications questioning the policy and timing of the announcement. Given the proliferation of these platforms in our society, we thought it would be interesting to see how the American consumer viewed these changes both from a question of support, but also how consumers viewed the motivation of the changes. 

Not surprisingly, support for the moves was often split along political, geographic, and generational lines. Some believe that these changes are essential for free speech, while others regard them as politically driven actions that could jeopardize user experience and the safety of certain groups in our society. A quick summary would be to say that Democrats and older generations tend to advocate for stronger content moderation, while conservatives and Millennials are more inclined to support the steps taken by the company. 

What is less divisive is the views on what motivated Meta to make these changes. Unlike support or opposition, there are only small differences when it comes to how people view the driving force behind the changes, with most Americans feeling that currying favor with the soon-to-be President as the biggest driver. That being said, very few Americans viewed the changes as being driven by only one factor. 

General Sentiment Around Changes

Our initial goal was to better understand how people felt about Meta’s policy changes, but rather than just asking a simple support or oppose question or forcing a ranked choice, we wanted a more detailed picture of the views consumers hold. So, we asked participants to rate their opinions on a scale. This helped us understand not only how each policy compared to the others, but also the strength of support that people hold. The approach also allows us to track differences by geography, generation, and political affiliation. Although there was no overwhelming support or opposition to any policy, clear trends did emerge.

By using this approach, we were able to record more than simply an instinctive response. We were able to see the degree of support for each policy and how those sentiments compared to other changes. This method helps us better understand how various groups viewed Meta's policy changes and intentions.

When we looked at the public's average level of support for Meta's policy changes, it was clear that no single change dominated the others. Eliminating third-party fact-checkers received the most support (a lukewarm mean of 50.71 on a 0 to 100 scale), and modifying the hateful conduct policy came in second (49.89), while the changes that involved shifting content moderation to Texas (42.95) and showing more political content (42.08) generated less supportive reactions. With the average responses hovering around the middle of the scale, there tend to be a few ways to arrive at this overall response. Either the audience is split in two with everyone either being a 0 or a 100, the vast majority is in the middle of the scale, or respondents are spread out across the spectrum putting the average in about the middle of the scale.

In general, the latter tended to be the case. 

Getting Rid of 3rd Party Fact Checkers

Getting rid of 3rd party fact-checkers received the highest overall support, but was also the most divisive. Overall, 21% of American consumers support this policy (an 81 or above on the support scale) while 23% strongly oppose the decision (20 or less on the support scale). For the roughly half of consumers who feel between the two book-end views, roughly half gave a more neutral score (41-60) while 17% lean towards supporting the policy (a score of 61-80) and 13% lean towards opposing the policy.

A consumer’s choice in last year’s general election was a determining difference on this question. For consumers who voted for President Trump, 32% strongly support this change, while 22% lean in that direction. Just 8% of Trump voters oppose this change. 2 out of 5  who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris (40%) oppose the change, while 12% are strong supporters and 14% lean in that direction.

The generation a consumer is in tends to paint a different picture when it comes to support for this change. The youngest adult consumers (Gen Z) show the lowest levels of strong support for this change, but that lack of strong support does not translate to a higher level of opposition to the change. Boomers have the highest concentration of detractors for the plan to remove 3rd party fact-checkers. 

Updating the Hateful Conduct Policy

The plan to update the hateful conduct policy was arguably one of the more divisive decisions. The company says that this change is to “allow more speech by lifting restrictions on some topics that are part of mainstream discourse and focusing our enforcement on illegal and high-severity violations.” Detractors tend to point at the apparent loopholes that this policy has, as well as the targeting of specific minority groups. 

Overall 15% of consumers strongly support this policy and 17% strongly oppose the decision. However, when we look at the responses by which candidate a consumer supported in the last presidential election, we see a very different set of views. Among supporters of President Trump, 26% strongly support this change, while 19% lean in that direction. Just 9% oppose the policy. Among Vice President Harris’s supporters, nearly 2 out of 5 (37%) strongly oppose this change and just 7% strongly support the change. 

While there are some differences based on generation, these differences are relatively small and do not have a big impact on the overall results.

Nearly half of Gen Z (49%) took a neutral position on changing the hateful conduct policy, making them the most indifferent group. Support was stronger among Millennials and Gen X, who also tended to be neutral, with Millennials displaying the strongest support (19%). Of all the generations, Boomers were the most opposed to the shift, with 21% strongly rejecting it. The generational divide was clear: older generations, especially Boomers, were more hesitant, while younger respondents were typically more open, or at the very least, indifferent.

Moving Internal Content Moderation to Texas

Of the four policy changes we tested, moving the content moderation team from California to Texas tended to get the most shoulder shrugs from consumers. About a third of respondents overall placed their support in the middle scoring range (between 41 and 60), and the remaining views tended to lean in the direction of opposition. A quarter of consumers gave either a high level of support (13%) or lean in that direction (12%). At the same time, 27% of consumers strongly oppose this decision and an additional 17% lean towards opposition. 

When it comes to opposing this idea, there was a noticeable effect when looking at party affiliation (not necessarily which candidate they supported in 2024). Among Democrats, strong opposition is at 34%, while 20% of Republicans strongly oppose the move. Independent voters fall into the middle with 27% strongly opposing. On the other end of the spectrum, the differences do not fall into a similar pattern, with 18% of Republicans strongly supporting the plan, and 10% of both Democrats and Independents respectively agreeing. 

Interestingly, Gen Z consumers had the highest concentration of opposition to the planned move (37%) while the opposition within the next three generations tended to be more in the mid-20s. The opposite was true on the higher support end of the spectrum, with just 7% of Gen Z consumers strongly supporting the move which is about half of what the other generations show.

Showing More Political Content

The overall least popular move by Meta is phasing in more political content to people who want to see more of it in their feeds, which overhauls an earlier decision to limit political content across its platforms. This is a somewhat vague approach but many consumers are not in support of this path. 3 in 10 (30%) strongly oppose this change while just 12% are in strong support. The largest concentration of opinions is in the middle range of 41-60 on the 0 to 100 scale (32% fall into this category). 

When it comes to showing more political content, political affiliation plays a major role. Consumers who consider themselves to be Republican have the highest concentration of strong supporters (17%) while just 9% of Democrats agree. On the negative end of the scale, 20% of Republicans strongly oppose the change, while 31% of Independents feel the same way. The biggest detractors of this plan are Democrat consumers, who by more than a 4 to 1 margin strongly oppose the change compared to those who strongly support it. Interestingly, Independents have the highest concentration of those who are neutral to the change (35%).

Motivations

When moving past the specifics of the plans themselves, there tended to be more agreement to what consumers felt was driving (or motivating) Meta’s changes. When asked to allocate their views on the source of the changes, a majority of consumers felt that appealing to President Trump was the biggest motivator (an average allocation of 51.19) while the desire to improve user experience had an average allocation of 30.97. The catchall of “other factors” had an average allocation of nearly half of that  (17.84).

Looking at the averages, we find that consumers’ views are pretty clear. Overall, 39% of consumers feel that most of the decision was based on appeasing the incoming President. An additional 9% felt that a majority (51-59%) of the decision was based on Trump, and 14% felt that it was mostly about Trump (41-50%). Less than 1 in 10 consumers (8%) feel the decision had nothing to do with Trump. 

While Meta suggested that these changes were in the interest of the users, the users don’t seem to be buying that thinking. Overall, 17% feel that these decisions had nothing to do with user experience, while an additional 12% felt that it was somewhere between 1 and 10% of the decision. Just 13% agreed with the company description and indicated that they felt the strong majority of the decision (61% or more) was about user experience.

Unlike the policy changes themselves, there was less division in opinions based on political allegiance or age. Indeed, a near majority of Harris supporters (46%) feel that the decisions were based on appeasing Trump. Supporters of the current President tend to share this view with 41% agreeing that it was almost all about Trump. Harris supporters are slightly more likely to say it had little or nothing to do with user experience (37% of Harris supporters feel this way compared to 24% of Trump voters).

At the end of the day, reactions to Meta’s policy shifts were relatively predictable and views tended to be influenced by political affiliation, generational differences, and underlying trust (or mistrust) in the company's intentions. If consumers are correct and these decisions were more about Trump than anything else, it will be tough to judge how successful these changes will be since they were designed for an audience of one. However, if the main goal was to come across as focused on the users of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, it is tough to argue that this rollout was a success.