Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has announced the departure of its number two Sheryl Sandberg and is launching a charm offensive vis-à-vis the media.
It is not a coincidence if the Sheryl Sandberg page turns now, nearly four years after the recruitment of Nick Clegg, the former British Deputy Prime Minister, as head of public affairs at Facebook or rather Meta, as Mark Zuckerberg’s company is now called. Sandberg drove the giant’s crazy growth in mobile advertising, until it hit a kind of plateau and suffered Apple’s measures to prevent its users from being tracked.
The one who remains, Nick Clegg, has his hands on a data that is no less essential today: his lobbying. And lobbying, Meta needs it more than ever in the face of fiscal pressure from States, in the face of threats to legislate in the United States and in Europe to break its supremacy, in the face of fines and privacy regulations from the European Commission … Moreover, Meta is a name chosen to bring our gaze to the metaverse, beyond the many occurrences where the Facebook brand was associated: Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, which had enabled Trump’s campaign to influence subscribers, Facebook and infox like at the time of the Covid with false remedies or propaganda images on the war in Ukraine, Facebook and calls for hatred as we saw in Burma with the massacre of the Rohingyas…
Spare the media and the French authorities
In addition, in recent years, Facebook and Google have been seen less and less favorably by the media from which they capture most of the digital advertising and from which they do not always respect copyright. But now Meta, entirely turned towards his parallel universe, seems determined to spare the media and the public authorities. In France, it is measured by small signs such as the copyright agreement signed this week with Scam, an author’s society. In February, Facebook News was deployed in France with numerous media partners and the promise of being a source of audience and remuneration for press publishers. Recently, Meta also signed an agreement with the Alliance de la presse d’information générale to pay neighboring rights in favor of publishers and journalists.
As for the public authorities, they are not forgotten since Meta France announced this week an unprecedented partnership with the government and the citizen NGO A voted to encourage voters to move for the legislative elections of June 12 and 19. Five years ago, Facebook also teamed up with AFP to verify content. It remains to be hoped that Meta plays the game to direct the advertising tap towards reliable information.