Source [De]Coded — Americans don’t trust tech leaders. They’re still willing to.

Alright, team,

The midterms are officially behind us, and our timing couldn’t have been better. Our public affairs research with Talisman, conducted by Shearwater Strategies, landed in Fortune on the eve of Election Day, and our partner Tim Biba of Talisman weighed in for Provoke Media on why the next Congress could bring more scrutiny for business, even without new rules. And the team keeps growing. Troy Kelley just joined as EVP, Consumer Technology and Integrated Marketing, and we’re thrilled to welcome Florian Hohenauer as SVP, Managing Director, Germany. Two new leaders, a Fortune feature, and it’s only the first week of November. Not a bad way to kick off the month.

That research is where this week starts. Americans don’t trust tech leaders, but they’re still willing to, and that tension runs through this whole edition. We’re digging into what our poll says about the cost of executive silence, why Meta just handed advertisers all the liability for its AI-generated ads, why Britain’s CMA is asking whether Meta’s terms cross into exploitative, and how Clorox is using AI to actually listen to its customers. Trust isn’t assumed anymore. It’s earned in public, in the fine print, and in real time.

Let’s get into it.

Becky and Greg

Americans Don’t Trust Tech Leaders. They’re Still Willing To.

New SourceCode polling shows the public reads executive silence as evasion, and the window to change that is open right now.
https://sourcecodecommunications.com/the-source/tech-leaders-public-trust-poll/

TL;DR: A national poll from SourceCode and Talisman, LLC, conducted by Shearwater Strategies with 1,563 respondents, finds Americans believe tech leaders care most about getting rich and then about avoiding scrutiny. More than half say leaders should prioritize honesty, but only about 17% think they do. Still, 9 in 10 named at least one thing a leader could do to earn their trust, and 69% said something could win their support for a local data center.

Takeaway: The default crisis playbook for tech executives heading into a new Congress is to go quiet. This data says that move confirms the exact suspicion the public already holds. “No comment” and NDA-wrapped projects now read as proof of the avoidance Americans expect. The other finding comms teams should sit with: the “we’re racing China” argument isn’t landing, because people don’t see how winning that race makes their lives better. That puts Davos-style global stages at odds with what audiences want. The opening is local and specific. Noise levels, water use, electricity costs, privacy protections. Executives who show up early on those issues get to define themselves before an oversight hearing lumps them in with whoever is loudest.

Consider:

• For marketers: Is your executive content calendar built around earnings and global keynotes, or does it include local, community-level proof points that answer the questions people are actually asking?
• For communications leaders: When your CEO’s instinct is to lie low through the next oversight cycle, what evidence are you bringing to the table to show silence carries its own reputational cost?

Meta draws a line: your AI, your liability

A quiet contract update puts all the legal risk of AI-generated ads squarely on the advertiser, not the platform.

https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/419120/advertisers-want-humans-in-the-loop-platforms-s.html?edition=144330

TL;DR:

Meta has amended its commercial terms to place 100% of legal and regulatory liability for AI-generated ad outputs onto advertisers. The move sharpens a conflict that has been building for some time: platforms are pushing harder toward full automation while marketers are pushing back, asking for meaningful human oversight of what gets published in their name.

Takeaway:

This is the tension in a contract clause. Meta is building a world where its systems generate, optimise, and deliver ads with minimal human intervention, and it now wants no part of what goes wrong when they do. For marketers, that is a significant shift in the risk calculus of platform dependence. Accepting automation without oversight is no longer just a creative or brand question. It is a legal one. Communications leaders should be asking whether their organisations even have a process to review AI-generated outputs before they run.

Consider:

• For marketers, do your current contracts and approval workflows account for liability exposure when AI generates ad creative or copy on your behalf?
• For communications leaders, how would you explain to a regulator, or a journalist, what human review existed before an AI-generated ad caused harm?

Britain’s competition watchdog turns its attention to how Meta treats the people who pay it

The CMA wants to know whether Meta’s terms for publishers and advertisers cross the line from tough to exploitative.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/uks-cma-opens-investigation-into-metas-terms-publishers-advertisers-2026-10-30

TL;DR:

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority has opened a formal investigation into Meta’s commercial terms for publishers and advertisers. The CMA’s concern is whether those terms are exploitative. The investigation is now underway, with no outcome determined yet.

Takeaway:

Read alongside the liability story above, this regulatory move starts to look like the beginning of a broader reckoning with how dominant platforms set terms that their commercial partners have little real power to refuse. For marketers, regulatory scrutiny of platform terms is worth tracking closely, not because it will resolve quickly, but because it signals that the rules of the relationship may eventually change. Communications leaders at brands that depend heavily on Meta inventory should be paying attention to how this investigation develops and what it might mean for their negotiating position down the line.

Consider:

• For marketers, how much of your paid media strategy rests on terms you have never meaningfully negotiated and could not easily walk away from?
• For communications leaders, if the CMA investigation produces findings that are unflattering to Meta, how does your brand want to be positioned in that story?

Clorox is using AI to listen to consumers and feed those signals back into its campaigns

The consumer goods brand is applying AI-driven feedback analysis across several of its product lines to sharpen marketing performance.

How Clorox uses AI and consumer feedback to improve marketing campaigns

TL;DR:

Clorox is using AI to analyse consumer feedback and apply those insights to improve marketing campaigns across brands including Clorox Pure, Pine-Sol, and Brita. The approach connects what consumers are saying to how the company shapes its marketing activity.

Takeaway:

The interesting thing here is not the AI, it is the loop. Clorox is treating consumer feedback as a live input to campaign decisions, not a post-campaign report. That is a different operating model, one where the signal from the market is continuous rather than periodic. For marketers, the question is less about the technology and more about whether your team is structured to act on real-time consumer signals, or whether insights still arrive too late to change anything that matters.

Consider:

• For marketers, at what point in your campaign cycle does consumer feedback actually influence what runs, and is that fast enough to be useful?
• For communications leaders, how are you distinguishing between AI-driven insight that sharpens your message and noise that simply confirms what you already believed?