In a call to investors, after posting strong gains during a plague year, Facebook said it will reduce the amount of political content on its platform.
Timing is everything, couldn’t this have been done sooner to avoid the growing spread of misinformation? Well, yes. But now regulators are looking even more closely at how it moderates content, an ongoing and dicey topic for platforms.
David Cohen covered Facebook's earnings. Here’s what to know:
The company posted an $11.2 billion profit in Q4, an increase of more than 50% from the year prior. Ecommerce boosted profits to these extraordinary heights.Apple’s anti-tracking looms large, especially in Q4 2021.Facebook is reducing the volume of political content shown in the news feed but hasn’t said how.Make sure you check out the piece for the full report.
An interesting point, political content makes up 6% of the content on Facebook, but the attention that receives, and the damage that it does, is far greater.
Although, how much the cull will do to assuage conservatives or liberals is debatable. The former could point to declining engagement as evidence Facebook is throttling free speech, the latter could claim they are blamed for the far right’s misgivings.
This week, we've been hosting our Outlook 2021 event this week, so check out the coverage. Tune in here today at approximately 1 p.m. ET to hear from my colleague Ronan Shields and me. We'll outline what we're hearing in between our coverage in the ad tech and media landscapes. As Ronan said in his newsletter: Come for the insights, stay for the foreign accents.
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Thanks for reading, have a great week.
Lucinda
Lucinda.Southern@adweek.com
