Meta pushes for “free speech” as TikTok falls short: a dramatic cultural shift for social

The news cycle leaves no room to draw breath as strategic pivots and Supreme Court hearings come thick and fast. Changes are afoot – and they paint a very different picture of the digital landscape of the future. While the US forges ahead with its proposed TikTok ban, Meta is going all-in for free speech – both mark a dramatic cultural shift for social, and entertainment more broadly. 

The TikTok ban question

A law banning TikTok in the US is set to come into effect on January 19th, 2025.  The platform now has less than a week to divest from parent company ByteDance if it wants to remain in the country. In the leadup, the Supreme Court held a session on Friday 10th, 2025, to hear final arguments on whether to delay. However, the tight turnaround, combined with pointed questions at the hearing, indicate that it will not move to delay the law. A TikTok ban seems imminent, with a sale highly unlikely to take place in the span of less than a week (unless rumours of a sale to Elon Musk – described as ‘pure fiction’ by a ByteDance representative – manifest into reality). 

Incoming president Trump has also asked for a delay to find a ‘political solution’ to the proposed TikTok ban, but as president, his powers will be limited. He has the option to simply not enforce the law or to declare that TikTok has met its conditions regardless of whether it makes changes. However, either would be imperfect solutions and leave a lot of legal loose ends, making TikTok’s future even trickier to navigate. 

Regardless, TikTok’s representatives have said the app will go dark on the day the law goes into effect (as reported by The Information. While users with it downloaded would otherwise technically still be able to use the app, just not update it, instead all users will be led to a page informing them of the ban. Behind all this posturing, there seems to be a sort of power play happening: the US has put its foot down about TikTok divesting, yet TikTok seems adamant that it will not, galvanising users with public displays while making absolutely no (visible) moves to sell. 

Meta’s “free speech” strategic pivot

If TikTok seems unwilling to capitulate to American political interests, Meta has done the opposite, with Mark Zuckerberg last week announcing an end to its platforms’ fact checking in favour of community notes, similar to the process on X. Mirroring  Musk’s favourite talking points, Zuckerberg lauded the benefits for ‘free speech’ on Meta platforms. This involves  relaxing community guidelines and raising the barrier to post removal in favour of community moderation. He cited a change in ‘mainstream discourse’ as the driving force behind this. 

Community notes on X are considered a valuable tool. However, X has faced criticism for its relatively ungoverned discourse, having resulted in the spread of misinformation and extremism that has spurred riots in the UK and beyond. Facebook itself has fallen foul of such issues in the past, with Amnesty International calling for reparations after posts on the platform prompted violence in Myanmar back in 2022. 

For Meta, the implications are twofold. On the one hand, a loosening of community guidelines  will lead to a rise in inflammatory posts and misinformation, which get more engagement. It will also endear the platforms to the incoming administration. 

On the other hand, X has seen a migration of users to Bluesky as a result of its ‘hands off’ moderation policy, especially since Musk’s political involvement. With a decrease in fact checking and proposed push of ‘virtual’ profile (as outlined by The Verge), a deterioration of reliability could have negative effects. Users may lose faith in the platforms altogether – not to mention the impact on advertisers. Already, many companies have cited concerns that their brands could be shown side by side with less savoury posts. These concerns lost X potentially millions of dollars in ad revenue back in 2023 (per The New York Times) – a daunting prospect for companies whose revenues are almost entirely derived from ads. 

Digital goes from global back to local

With Meta going the X route and a US TikTok ban on the horizon, change is looming in the very ability to distribute information – be it news, ads, promotion campaigns, or even a gauge on what people are thinking. 

EU and UK sentiment about these platforms is waning, especially in light of the proposed changes. A cultural fragmentation seems inevitable between traditionally aligned Western markets, at a time when other regions – especially South America, China, and India, along with other Southeast Asian markets – are on the rise. Social platforms were once a place where regional boundaries could disappear and a global discourse could emerge. The new changes mean this is likely to reverse, as regions pick and choose their platforms based on political alignment and fragmenting cultural relevance. 

For entertainment, a breakdown of social platform prominence could be a good thing. Social platforms are where a lot of entertainment consumption happens, with it being more difficult than ever to get audiences to follow propositions off-site. This has changed the career trajectories of music artists, many of whom now use social as a first and only point of call, as well as labels, which have had to make licensing deals to suit the new state of things the same way they did with streaming platforms fifteen-plus years ago. Marketing strategies will have to shift more locally, but this focus can better foster home-grown stars and opportunities for live events. 

Moreover, a lack of trust in platform curation means a greater focus on creators themselves. We have already seen this to some extent, with users following creators based on their opinions or fans trusting creators for recommendations more than ads themselves. These effects are not limited to music, with video likely to see similar effects. Gaming, now the most social branch of the entertainment family, could see even more engagement. As social platforms become quagmires of opinion and touchy topics, many users simply want a fun and  straightforward way of communicating with their friends online, like while running campaigns in Call of Duty or sending skibidi toilet rizz memes in Roblox. 

In a roundabout way, a lack of trust in the centralised digital infrastructure means that entertainment and its stars will have more clout than ever. 

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