Meta Now Lets Users Say Gay and Transgender People Have ‘Mental Illness’

Meta announced series of major updates to its content moderation policy today, including termination Reality check partnership and “remove” restrictions on speech on “topics such as immigration, gender identity and sexuality” which the company describes as frequent topics of political discussion and debate. “It’s not right that things can be said on TV or in Congress, but not on our platform,” Meta’s newly appointed director of global affairs Joel Kaplan wrote in a blog post Outline the changes.

In an accompanying video, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg described the company’s current rules in these areas as “out of step with mainstream discourse.”

In parallel with this announcement, the company made several updates to its Community Guidelines, an expanded set of rules that outline what types of content are prohibited on Meta’s platforms, including Instagram, Threads, and Facebook. Some of the most prominent changes were made to “Obnoxious behavior” policy, including discussions on immigration and gender.

In a notable change, the company now says it allows “allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, based on political and religious discourse.” about transgenderism and homosexuality and the common use of non-serious words like ‘queer'”.

In other words, Meta now appears to allow users to accuse transgender or gay people of being mentally ill because of their gender expression and sexual orientation. The company did not respond to requests for clarification on the policy.

Meta spokesperson Corey Chambliss told WIRED that these restrictions will be eased globally. When asked whether the company applies different policies in countries with strict regulations on hate speech, Chambliss sharp Meta’s current guidance addresses local laws.

Other significant changes made to Meta’s Hateful Conduct policy on Tuesday include:

• Remove language that prohibits content that targets people on the basis of their “protected characteristics,” including race, ethnicity, and gender identity, when combined with “a statement that they contracting or spreading the Corona virus. Without this provision, it would now be possible to hold, for example, the Chinese responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic.
• A new addition appears to make room for people who want to post about how, for example, women aren’t allowed to serve in the military or men aren’t allowed to teach math because of their gender. Meta currently allows content arguing for “gender-based restrictions for military, law enforcement, and teaching jobs. We also allow similar content based on sexual orientation, when the content based on religious beliefs.”
• Another update details what Meta allows in conversations about social exclusion. It now states that “people sometimes use sex- or gender-specific language when discussing access to spaces that are often limited by sex or gender, such as rights bathroom use, specific schools, specific military, law enforcement or teaching roles, and health or support.” groups.” Previously, this engraving was only available for discussions about keeping support and health groups limited to one gender.
• Meta’s Hateful Conduct Policy has previously opened up by noting that hate speech can “promote offline violence.” That sentence, which has been in the policy since 2019, was removed from the updated version released Tuesday. (In 2018, according to reports from human rights groups, Meta was admit that its platform has been used to incite violence against religious minorities in Myanmar.) The update keeps the content at the bottom of the policy banning content that could “incite violence or make imminent threats.”