Ahoy Metamates! 🚢 🏴‍☠️

What an earnings call! Detailed breakdown coming for paid subscribers on Saturday morning - make you’re you’re signed up so you don’t miss it!

Meanwhile, let’s talk election-

How the GOP is getting around Meta’s rules

We live in some kind of alternate timeline where Gen Z is going to be the election sway vote. Being “brat” is a thing. And somehow the propaganda battleground is split between TikTok, Discord, Kik and 4chan. Yes, 4chan.

It’s weird to say this but Meta seems to have finally have a grip on elections. For one, there seems to have been a conscious effort to lock down any possible combination of SEO keywords involving “Meta” and “ politics” in the same sentence.

That’s not to say that it’s all kosher, it’s just very very … different?

• Majority of political ads are getting around Meta policies by selling merchandise like hats,sneakers, t-shirts and coins

• Both sides seem to be deploying ads through PACs and hiring growth firms, instead of directly

• In the last 2 weeks, I’m seeing an uptick of poll based ads

This is significant. Mainly because no one in politics gives a flying f about selling T-shirts or shoes. But selling political merch on Meta gets around ad restrictions - with the true end goal of collecting credit card information and emails. Majority of merchants are upselling a monthly political donation at checkout.

For example - This ad is ran by an account names Trump Team, which presents itself as a “ family run business”, but in reality its copyright is owned by Atlas Media Lab, LLC, an agency based in Spain. By splitting growth spend across hundreds, if not thousands of small agencies like that, the GOP is running extremely clever and large scale awareness campaigns.

Still, election spend is barely making it to social media this year: 

• Political ad spending is up from $9B in ‘20 to $12B in ‘24

• However only 17.5% is going to social media (vs 45% TV ads)

And even less of the engagement is making it to Meta & its associated platforms.

The New Town Square ( is no longer Meta)

While Zuck is busy petting lamas is his effort to become a meme lord…

Three important social engagement trends are unfolding that to me will be relevant later in how I view the stock price of Meta:

1) Twitter/ X has become a news source for election information

Twitter pre Elon: a place where VCs and founders go to humble brag.

X post Elon: The definitive town square where journalists, business leaders and regular folk go to consume news. Whether’s biased or not, X has turned mainstream news into entertainment that people tune in for in droves

X Metrics are also looking interesting:

• 250M DAU ( +17%YoY for mobile users) vs TikTok 121M in US

• 550M MAU vs 1.5B TikTok and ~3B Meta

• Users spend 30 minutes a day on X vs 2 hours/ day on TikTok

• 1.7 million people join X every day

• 8 billion video views per day (+43% YoY)

• 350,000 communities on X ( +600% YoY)

• 80% of user sessions on X include video

The engagement dynamics and social positioning of X are not coincidental. It’s Elon’s ambition to take the company out in an IPO by ‘26. This makes the space slightly more crowded for Meta stock and I think it presents a meaningful risk to the stock price in the future.

2) People took their drama elsewhere

The crazies have departed from Facebook Groups - most of them, anyway. In an extremely bizarre turn of events, most right wing groups have “gone dark” in invite only forums on Discord etc and most left wing groups and grass roots organizing on Telegram.

While some of this is temporary, there will be a long lasting depolarization effect for Meta’s community products. Here’s how platforms are currently being utilized:

TLDR: New Risks for Meta’s Stock Price

These trends will persist past the election, irregardless of who wins. What I care about more is - what does it take to influence a group’s purchasing decision to close. And elections are an interesting case study for that.

• Private, invite only, low moderation communities are driving the highest engagement

• Influencers and creators are worth more than direct ads this cycle

• Focus on shadow communities like 4chan for virality ( the same place that gave us Q conspiracies last election cycle)

• The ability to present political viewpoints as “news” is driving new community growth

Open questions I have/ risks I see -

1) Is Meta’s AI driven ad strategy viable long term as a stand alone ?

• We’re seeing an unbundling of communities + an erosion of value of the newsfeed

• Some of the more active communities on Blue are business focused

• TikTok is catching up on MAU

Prediction: The most viable surface for ad growth will likely be business messaging.

2) Influencers/ Creators don’t view Meta as central to their brand

• Youtube and TikTok are both higher earning channels for influencers and Instagram has performed poorly at getting this community’s trust

Prediction: Meta will buy Passes (or at least it should).

3)Heavy moderation is driving away valuable engagement

• Multiple large lawsuits regarding newsfeed + heavy post moderation has really neutered the central/ town square feel of Blue.

Prediction: Heavier investment in Reels and Threads coming.

Bonus: “Mark’s Looking Like An Albanian From the Bronx Nowadays”

I read that on X and, if the shoe fits…. but seriously, every time there’s new press on him, he’s wearing more chains. His avatar on Threads is literally this:

And it’s not a secret that he’s become highly relatable and dare I saw “ cool”? Maybe this is why:

Coming up Next: Watch out for the Earnings Call Breakdown later this week!

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