Meta’s community notes won’t apply to paid ads. Marketers still have questions.

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Facebook and Instagram owner Meta Platforms assured advertisers this week that its “Community Notes," which will let users crowdsource annotations on posts that they believe are false or need context, won’t apply to paid ads when they arrive later this year, according to people with direct knowledge of the conversations. Advertisers have been waiting to learn how they will be affected since Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on Jan.

7 that he was ending the company’s fact-checking and introducing Community Notes in its place. Meta’s Community Notes will resemble those of social-media platform X, where volunteers propose and approve addendums to posts that they think need more information. X’s system applies to both paid and unpaid posts, however, and ads for brands from Apple to Uber have been called out in attached user notes for making allegedly false or misleading claims.

Some of the brands have deleted ads that were marked with such notes. Community Notes on Meta platforms will be enabled for organic content, meaning posts that Meta hasn’t been paid to promote. That includes influencers’ sponsored posts that Meta hasn’t been paid to boost, as well as organic posts on brands’ own accounts, according to a message from a Meta employee to ad buyers viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Aspects of the program remain in flux. Brand and influencer organic posts might not be subject to Community Notes when they first go live, for example, a person familiar with Meta said. Meta has told advertisers that Community Notes will apply to organic posts, not paid ads, but its official messages haven’t gone into detail about brands’ and influencers’ unpromoted posts.