Lose money for the firm, and I will be understanding. Lose a shred of reputation for the firm, and I will be ruthless” — Warren Buffett

Instagram may soon be worse than X—and you’re not seeing it. Some signs.

Let’s not pretend Meta is drifting quietly. The company’s slow but deliberate unravelling of its DEI commitments and content moderation policies is less a pivot than a purge. From dismantling fact-checking units to redefining what counts as hate speech—“calling trans people freaks is no longer a violation,” reported The Intercept—Meta’s house style is now politically palatable to the worst rooms in the internet. Instagram and Facebook, once half-hearted stewards of community standards, are now on a path to outflank X not by doing less wrong, but by pretending nothing’s wrong at all. This isn’t a governance crisis. It’s a business strategy. One that puts advertisers, civil society partners and internal dissenters in a bind: stay and be complicit, or leave and be replaced by those less troubled by ethical nuance. Meta’s silence on backlash is deafening. No explanation, no debate, just strategic apathy. The Financial Times recently noted that Meta’s shrinking trust and safety operations aren’t just cost-saving—they’re ideological reengineering. If your brand still aligns with Meta’s platforms without revisiting its risk exposure, you may want to double-check whether you’re sleeping with the lights off or the blindfold on.

Barcelona’s Telus-run moderation centre never stood a chance. For years, CCC contractors were exposed daily to murder, rape, suicide and the murkiest layers of online violence—all while being paid a fraction of Meta’s direct employees. And then, just like that, 2,000 were gone. The closure, reported widely by La Vanguardia, came without warning, context or concern. Meta washed its hands. Telus shrugged. And the people who built the safety net—flimsy as it was—were left without protection, counselling or clarity. The “fun floor” solution, that grotesque euphemism for trauma mitigation, became the punchline to a horror story. Meta’s plausible deniability—outsourcing toxicity, reaping the benefit, distancing from the blood—is its core design. And no one at the top seems particularly troubled. Except, perhaps, the PR team—although even they seem on a smoke break. There’s no open letter. No formal closure message. Just another invisibilised human system collapsing, with the complicity of platforms and the cowardice of silence. Meanwhile, advertisers keep moving budgets from X to Instagram, believing the latter remains the more “brand-safe” option. The joke, sadly, is on them.

The exodus is not internal—it’s reputational. When the NAACP Legal Defense Fund publicly resigned from Meta’s civil rights advisory board, it wasn’t because they weren’t invited to meetings. It was because no one at Meta seemed to care anymore. As The Guardian reported, the group cited Meta’s policy regressions as incompatible with civil rights work. The company’s refusal to consult its own oversight bodies on key moderation decisions was the last straw. But what stands out is the speed of the abandonment: not just NAACP, but other advocacy groups too, once proudly featured in Meta’s PR decks, are walking out—or being quietly erased. Meta has pivoted from engagement to insulation. No more town halls. No more “dialogue.” What’s the message? If you’re not aligned with the business model, you’re just noise. That’s not culture shift. That’s a reputational implosion dressed as strategy. And it leaves brands, NGOs and media outlets with a choice: stay on Meta’s platforms and risk becoming part of the rot, or step back—and be accused of overreacting. Either way, the old social contract between platform and partner is gone. Replaced by a very corporate indifference.

Meta’s implosion isn’t American—it’s global. In the UK, internal teams have quietly revolted against the dismantling of DEI functions. According to The Economist, multiple regions raised red flags about the reputational risk of deprioritising equity commitments. The layoffs weren’t just cuts—they were signals. In Germany and France, unions flagged the end of moderation units as a prelude to “algorithmic neutrality”—a phrase that means “let the worst voices win.” Meanwhile, back in Barcelona, former CCC workers have begun informal testimonies online, denouncing not just the psychological trauma of their roles, but the cowardice of a platform that never acknowledged their existence. These are not isolated incidents. They are echoes of a systematic withdrawal from any shared value system. And as jurisdictions worldwide retool legislation to demand more platform accountability, Meta seems to be sprinting in the opposite direction. One imagines a room at headquarters filled with lawyers and lobbyists, frantically rebranding silence as scalability. If your agency, brand or comms team is still planning 2025 campaigns for Instagram “without drama,” you might want to ask who’s writing your crisis protocol—and in which century.

Brand safety isn’t just a media metric. It’s a reflection of ethical alignment. And Meta is quietly undermining it. While advertisers continue fleeing X in search of safer ground, Instagram is welcoming them with algorithmic arms—despite implementing fewer checks and balances. As reported by Axios, media buyers are growing nervous: how long can the “cleaner alternative” narrative hold when moderation teams have been gutted, watchdogs sidelined, and whistleblowers ignored? The idea that Meta is the safer bet is now a reputational time bomb. The ad dollars that moved in good faith may soon come with a cost. What does it say about your brand if the next viral scandal on Instagram unfolds next to your campaign? When advocacy groups begin naming and shaming again—not Twitter-style mobs, but investor-facing reports—will your brand look complicit or caught unaware? In the age of value-driven marketing, platforms that behave like hedge funds and hide behind APIs are not partners. They’re reputational hazards. And pretending Instagram is neutral because X is worse is a losing game of relativism.

There’s still time to disembark—gracefully. No boycott needed. No dramatic departure statement. But every comms director and CMO worth their salt should be having quiet, strategic conversations: how much reputational risk are we carrying by advertising on Meta’s platforms in 2025? What does our crisis playbook say about platform partners? Do we have a scenario prepared for when Meta’s next scandal is no longer abstract but directly affects our audience, our team or our shareholders? As The New Yorker put it, “Meta has spent years becoming too big to feel.” But that numbness is not shared. For those watching from outside, especially those who believed in ethical marketing and stakeholder capitalism, the company’s trajectory is jarring. And the question is no longer if Meta is the next X. It’s whether we’ve already crossed that line—while keeping the interface a little shinier. Buffett once said: lose money, and I’ll understand; lose reputation, and I’ll be ruthless. You can lose both by ignoring the signs. Just don’t say you weren’t warned.