Meta now lets users call women ‘property’ and gay people ‘mentally ill’

Good news for everyone who wants to spread hate and make the world a worse place: Meta he modified his Hateful Conduct Policy to be more permissive to bad behavior, allowing divisive and discriminatory content to thrive on their platforms. Users on Facebook, Instagramand The threads They are now allowed to call gays “mentally ill”, women “property”, and entire ethnicities “sick”.

The tech giant made significant changes to its Hateful Conduct policy on Tuesday, lifting prohibitions against a wide range of divisive and harmful rhetoric. In particular, Meta’s amended policy completely removed restrictions against dehumanizing people on the basis of a “protected characteristic” by comparing them to certain inanimate objects, impurities, and diseases such as cancer. Users are also now allowed to declare that the protected features do not exist or should not exist, or are inferior.

Protected characteristics are defined by Meta as “race, ethnicity, national origin, disability, religious affiliation, caste, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity, [or] serious illness.”

Meta also removed its previous acknowledgment that hateful conduct on its platforms “creates an environment of intimidation and exclusion, and in some cases may promote offline violence.”

Meta explicitly allows anti-LGBTQ content

Equally notable as the restrictions Meta has removed is the content it now explicitly allows, with harmful anti-LGBTQ rhetoric specifically allowed. In a video posted on tuesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that the company removes restrictions that are “out of touch with mainstream discourse”.

“We allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when they are based on gender or sexual orientation, given the political and religious discourse on transgenderism and homosexuality and the common non-serious use of words like” weird,” wrote Meta.

The American Psychological Association (APA) is clear about that transgender o attracted to the same sex they are not mental disorders, because neither cause significant distress or disability. Each has been removed from the APA’s official list of mental illnesses 2012 and 1973 respectively. In fact, the APA notes that it is discrimination and lack of acceptance in society that can lead to transgender people suffering from the current mental disorders of anxiety and depression.

Such harmful ostracization can often be expressed as, for example, allegations of mental illness or abnormality based on gender or sexual orientation.

“Despite the persistence of stereotypes that depict lesbian, gay, and bisexual people as disturbed, several decades of research and clinical experience have led all mainstream medical and mental health organizations in this country to conclude that these orientations represent normal forms of human experience”. says the APA.

Meta’s amended Hateful Conduct policy also explicitly allows content that argues that sexual orientation should prevent people from working in the military, law enforcement, or teaching, as long as such arguments are based on to religious beliefs. Although there is a caveat: Meta also does not require such a religious justification for the same discriminatory arguments based on sex.

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Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of LGBTQ advocacy organization GLAAD, said Meta’s changes gave a “green light for people to target LGBTQ people, women, immigrants and other marginalized groups with violence, vitriol , and dehumanizing narratives.”

“With these changes, Meta continues to normalize anti-LGBTQ hate for profit – at the expense of its users and true freedom of expression,” Ellis said. “Fact-checking and hate speech policies protect free speech.”

Mashable contacted Meta to ask if it consulted with any advocacy groups before amending its policy.

Meta aligned himself more closely with Trump in the run-up to the inauguration

These changes coincide with Meta’s decision to eliminate fact checkers and replace them with a community Notes system. Zuckerberg said fact-checkers have become “too politically biased,” and that “what started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut down people with different ideas.” .

As noted above, many such opinions are actively harmful and have no basis in fact. Even so, Meta seems determined to platforms such content, with the Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan who stated in a blog post that they have “restricted legitimate political debate and censored too much trivial content and subjected too many people to frustrating enforcement actions.”

It seems that in Meta’s estimation, subjecting users to the enforcement of a behavioral policy is less acceptable than subjecting them to dehumanization.

“We are getting rid of a number of restrictions on topics such as immigration, gender identity and gender that are the subject of frequent political discourse and debate,” Kaplan wrote. “It’s not fair that things can be said on TV or on the floor of Congress, but not on our platforms.”

Some would argue that this is more of an indictment on the state of Congress than a justification for more divisive and harmful content on social media. But with a deeply divided Republican leadership Donald Trump will take office as the President of the United States in less than two weeks, benefit Meta to loosen his Disgusting Conduct policy and try to work into his good graces.

“The recent election also feels like a cultural tipping point toward a shift in prioritizing speech,” Zuckerberg said. “So we have to go back to our roots and focus on reducing errors, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms.”

It seems reasonable to speculate that the changes to Meta’s policy may also be designed to preempt a few moderation headaches. The theme of moderation was a significant topic of discussion during Trump’s first term, with elected officials often making statements on social media that echoed the policies of the platforms. Trump himself has often been accused incitement to violence displaying a divisive rhetoric. Even so, Meta just took the step suspending then-President Trump from Facebook and Instagram after January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitoleventually lifting its ban two years later when he was no longer in charge.

Meta tried to love Trump in his second inauguration on January 20. Zuckerberg dined with the president-elect late last year, the tech giant confirmed that it had donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. This Monday Meta announced that three new members were elected to its board of directors – including Dana WhiteUltimate Fighting Champion (UFC) CEO and longtime friend and supporter of Trump.

“[Meta will] I’m working with President Trump to push back against foreign governments that are pursuing American companies to censor more.” Zuckerburg said Tuesday on Threads. “The United States has the strongest constitutional protections for free speech in the world and the best way to defend against the tendency of government overreach on censorship is with the support of the American government.”

Zuckerburg also announced that Meta is moving its trust and security and content moderation team out of California, with US content review now to be performed in Texas. The CEO stated that “This will help remove concerns that biased employees are over-censoring content,” although he did not explain why he apparently believes that people in Texas are less prejudiced than people in California.