Facts Are Optional: Brand Navigation in Trump's America
Meta signals how corporate America will realign under Trump. Brands need a new navigation system.
The internet is boiling over after Zuckerberg's announcement that Meta fact-checkers will be replaced by crowd-sourced "community notes." Coming days before Trump's inauguration, it signals more than a policy change - it's a preview of how brands will have to navigate a world where truth is optional.
Wrapped in a language of empowerment—"restoring users' power to share"—it came over as surrender to power. Worse, was he taking a hit now to 'plea-bargain' future favour on regulation or averted eyes over looming issues like AI copyright, advertising to minors?
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney says tech leaders are "pretending to be Republicans" to influence anti-competitive policies after "years of pretending to be Democrats.”
Beyond the obvious question for brands - "should we pull our ads?" - boardrooms and marketing departments just lost another waypoint on the map they use to navigate culture, predict hits and create value.
The problem is this: the harder it gets to determine authority, consensus - truth - the tougher time cultural intermediaries (that's brands) are going to have.
New Rules of Engagement
Meta’s reversal is a signal flare lighting a deeper transformation in how the culture processes information and assigns value. When "gays are not normal" becomes permissible speech, we're not seeing content moderation evolve, we're watching cultural anchors come unmoored. Imagine the conversations in the Unilever boardroom alone.
There are big implications. According to fact-checkers (‘sorry for citing authority, Zuck’) only 9% of community-sourced notes make it to publication because, as one put it, “Guess what? In a highly polarised society and world, people don't agree on a lot."
When agreement on basic facts becomes elusive, how do brands build meaningful connections with audiences?
This matters because it accelerates what Beth Bentley, borrowing from David Hesmondhalgh, described in a newsletter this week as the “pluralisation of cultural authority”. A process already destabilising how we determine what's relevant, aspirational, or important.
When fragmenting cultural influence meets declining institutional authority in a polarised battle of individuals, the result is more than just noise - it's a rewiring of how society processes truth and assigns value.
Three Forces Reshaping How We Navigate Truth
1. The Dissolution of Authority
In which a libertarian dream of absolute ‘free speech’ leads to the cacophony of confusion.
(An aside: Note how treacherous it becomes to voice even the slightest reservation about a development draped in the noble rhetoric of 'free speech'! )
2. The Volatility Trap
Societies have always aligned around figures given the role of truth or consensus-seeking - whether it was Greek thinkers or African Griots - they provide an anchor from which diversity of opinion can circle without losing its moorings. It’s easy to attack the idea of an ‘authority’. At one point in the UK we’d apparently ‘had enough of experts’; look where the subsequent chaos of amateurism then landed us. Without anchors the volatility of culture will be whiplash-inducing.
This volatility is compounded by the algorithm. We're no longer experiencing culture in waves but in personalised ripples, making it nearly impossible to establish shared reference points or reliable measures of consensus.
3. The Politicisation of Everything
Remember when brands could safely assume some topics were neutral ground? That territory is vanishing. Everything from coffee to running shoes a potential political flashpoint.
Meta's reversal uses our confusion and conflict as a slight of hand. As Matt Stoller says, the real politics lie in the question of "why a single individual has this much power over our speech commons?" When fact-checking itself becomes a political battleground, we're beyond polarisation into something more fundamentally destabilising.
The cynical read is this isn't about empowerment at all - it's about engagement. Social algorithms thrive on conflict. Fact-checking dampens viral spread; community notes feed it. Zuckerberg himself admits there will be 'more bad stuff' online as a result of these changes - describing something that sounds less like a bug and more like a feature.
Reading the Signs
Key shifts are emerging that will impact how brands operate in this new environment:
1. The Rise of Parallel Realities
Brands face audiences living in increasingly distinct information ecosystems
Traditional consensus-building through shared facts becomes nearly impossible (consensus here - to Beth Bentley’s point - includes fundamentals of consumer culture and identity like ‘taste’ and ‘desirability’)
Trust becomes more tribal than institutional
2. Macro Forces are a Cultural Compass
Generational cohorts (X, Y, Z) were products of an era when consensus was possible - when shared technological and social experiences could form coherent narratives. That unity is splintering
Major societal transformations are now the key differentiators - attitudes to climate transition, AI literacy, and social inequality may hold greater insight into values and behaviour than age or income
Platform economics amplify these divisions - the commodification of conflict drives them deeper into tribal identities
(The forces reshaping the world - from net zero to technological revolution - are becoming the real frameworks for understanding cultural alignment. Looking at creative output or consumption patterns, the driving force increasingly isn't a generational consensus but individual attitude to and experience of these transformative forces.)
3. The Courage to Take a Position
In a world seeking anchor points, clear positions become competitive advantages
A brutal segmentation is taking place, whether brands like it or not (we have clients who are steering straight for solutions to climate and other macro challenges; they’re quite clear only so many people will travel with them)
The costs of neutrality may soon outweigh the risks of taking positions, especially for companies with public ESG commitments
We're witnessing an extreme free-marketisation of culture, where attitudes and values fluctuate with the volatility of crypto. To read the cultural weather, look more to political and economic indicators than traditional market research.
Meta's capitulation shows how quickly cultural anchors can slip. The brands that thrive will understand how major societal transformations are reshaping culture - and have the courage to take clear positions.
Links:
Zuckerberg wants Trump to fight for Meta against Europe - Sensemaker Newsletter
The Centre Will Not Hold - Pattern Recognition
The cravenness of Mark Zuckerberg - FT
‘You're not going to be able to trust what you see’: top fact-checkers on Meta - MSNBC
About 33_Zero
33_Zero works with brands large (AWS, Oxfam) and small (Agronomics, Ivy Farm) on brand and comms. Our clients recognise that unprecedented change needn't be a threat but an opportunity. We help your brand show up and participate in this new reality.
Email jamesp@33seconds.co to find out more.