Meta’s shift from fact-checking to “community notes” moderation has predictably drawn criticism from all sides. The left sees it as courting favor with Trump, while the right claims it’s evidence that the platform was previously appeasing Biden. They’re both correct, but also miss the mark.
Content moderation has no perfect solution. Whether using fact-checking, community notes, or hybrid approaches, platforms must make judgment calls that satisfy some users while alienating others. The debate over Meta’s new community-driven tool simply reinforces this reality.
Politics inevitably shapes these decisions because platforms operate under complex pressures. While aiming to provide a forum for free speech, they also must balance advertiser demands, regulatory requirements, and diverse global audiences—each with strong views on acceptable content. These pressures often directly conflict. Advertisers demand brand-safe environments, while users expect minimal interference. European regulators require strict hate speech removal, while U.S. lawmakers warn against overmoderation. Global audiences in different cultural contexts interpret the same content differently. A platform must somehow thread this needle.
In this context, platforms naturally adjust to political pressures. The core challenges of content moderation – balancing expression with safety, speed with accuracy, global reach with local context – remain constant regardless of which political party holds power.
The challenge is amplified by our current political and social climate, where nuance and uncertainty are increasingly unwelcome. This creates an impossible task: perfectly policing an ever-evolving digital public square while satisfying a polarized user base that demands absolute certainty and politics that exhibits a “you’re either with us or against us” philosophy.
Content moderation is inherently at odds with that framework. Decisions face an inescapable paradox. Removing potentially harmful posts censors speech and risks overstepping. Leaving borderline content up risks failing to protect users from misinformation. Every line drawn will displease significant portions of the community.
Perhaps the most cited controversy was when Twitter banned Trump’s account following the January 6 US Capitol riot. But these controversies occur around the globe. Platforms have faced intense criticism for blocking or allowing politically charged content in countries with vastly different political systems, from suspending activists in certain authoritarian states to battling misinformation during elections in emerging democracies. Each scenario underscores the same challenge: drawing lines inevitably favors one group over another.
Meta’s pivot toward community notes reflects the fundamental nature of content moderation: inherently messy, dependent on educated guesses, and influenced by current political realities. Just as there’s no perfect balance between free expression and public responsibility, there’s no perfect process for content moderation.
Meta’s shift to community notes isn’t just another tactical adjustment – it exemplifies how platforms continually experiment with different approaches as they navigate these inherent tensions. Moreover, how Community Notes performs will depend on countless algorithmic choices, each of those with no right or wrong answer. Each new approach faces the same fundamental constraints.
Accepting imperfection means moving beyond demands for absolute consistency or perfect neutrality. Instead, we should evaluate content moderation systems on their transparency about tradeoffs, responsiveness to feedback, and ability to adapt as circumstances change. Perfect content moderation is impossible. However, we can work to continue developing better processes for handling its inherent messiness.
Scott Wallsten is President and Senior Fellow at the Technology Policy Institute and also a senior fellow at the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy. He is an economist with expertise in industrial organization and public policy, and his research focuses on competition, regulation, telecommunications, the economics of digitization, and technology policy. He was the economics director for the FCC's National Broadband Plan and has been a lecturer in Stanford University’s public policy program, director of communications policy studies and senior fellow at the Progress & Freedom Foundation, a senior fellow at the AEI – Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, an economist at The World Bank, a scholar at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and a staff economist at the U.S. President’s Council of Economic Advisers. He holds a PhD in economics from Stanford University.
