You’ve probably heard that Meta (parent of Facebook and Instagram) is abandoning fact-checking.
What you may not have heard is that it will be replaced by “Community Notes,” which will let users crowdsource annotations on posts that they believe are false or need context. Meta’s Community Notes will resemble those of social-media platform X, where volunteers propose and approve addendums to posts that they think need more information.
The good news (as reported by the Wall Street Journal) is Community Notes won’t apply to paid ads. Community Notes on Meta platforms will be enabled for organic content, meaning posts that Meta hasn’t been paid to promote.
The bad news is that organic posts is likely to include influencers’ sponsored posts that Meta hasn’t been paid to boost, as well as organic posts on brands’ own accounts.
As the WSJ notes:
Organic sponsored posts—such as a content creator [i.e. an influencer] being paid to showcase a product—have historically made up about 25% to 50% of brands’ marketing campaigns on Meta’s platforms and TikTok, said Ryan Stern, co-founder and chief executive of influencer marketing firm Collectively. Creators rely on this sort of material to fill out their branded-content earnings, and brands use it to complement the posts they do pay to boost, she said.
Meta’s new system might push more advertisers and creators to abandon organic content altogether to avoid the risk of critical Community Notes, said Lia Haberman, a consultant who teaches social-media marketing at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“I think we’re going to see the disappearance of sponsored content on creator [influencer] pages,” Haberman said.
As Meta is quick to point out, the details of the new “Community Notes” are still being worked out. But, worst case as far as influencers are concerned, brands may back away from providing sponsored content to influencers, at least on Facebook and Instagram.
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