Meta announced a series of major updates to its content moderation policies today, including ending its fact-checking partnerships and “getting rid” of restrictions on speech about “topics like immigration, gender identity and gender” that the company describes as frequent subjects of political discourse and debate. “It’s not right that things can be said on TV or the floor of Congress, but not on our platforms,” Meta’s newly appointed chief global affairs officer, Joel Kaplan, wrote in a blog post outlining the changes.

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

In tandem with this announcement, the company made a number of updates across its Community Guidelines, an extensive set of rules that outline what kinds of content are prohibited on Meta’s platforms, including Instagram, Threads, and Facebook. Some of the most striking changes were made to Meta’s “Hateful Conduct” policy, which covers discussions on immigration and gender.

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

In other words, Meta now appears to permit 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.

  • feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world
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    11 days ago

    I am pretty much okay with freedom of speech, sunlight is the best disinfectant, etc., etc. The alternative is driving this kind of rhetoric underground where they have the benefit of acting like they’re being oppressed as “truth-sayers” or whatever.

    I happen to think there’s some truth to some Conservative arsehole’s recent statement that pockets of Islamic migrants in the UK are incapable of culturally integrating, which is being lambasted as xenophobic hate speech despite the fact it’s demonstrably true. I saw a schoolgirl in the full veil yesterday, I’m sorry but I don’t think that’s in keeping with progressive values, whether you want to call those “Western” or not. Talk about referring to women as household objects.

    Then again, I haven’t used Facebook for years. Maybe they’re pandering to their user-base.

    • LotrOrc@lemmy.world
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      11 days ago

      It’s just as much freedom of choice to want to wear a full veil as it is to not want to wear one

      • AhismaMiasma@lemm.ee
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        11 days ago

        It’s not really a free choice if the price of not wearing a veil is child abuse.

        • LotrOrc@lemmy.world
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          11 days ago

          It’s not really racism if I assume that an entire group of people with over a billion members are all the same

          You have no idea if that child is abused or not

          • Makhno@lemmy.world
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            11 days ago

            Children within ultra-conservstive religious groups are very likely to be victims of abuse.

            It’s a pretty likely outcome when your worldview demands your progeny follow your every command

          • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
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            11 days ago

            It’s not really racism if I assume that an entire group of people with over a billion members are all the same

            What do you think racism is???

          • feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world
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            11 days ago

            I don’t believe the Mancunian schoolgirl dressed in the full Islamic veil I saw yesterday was suffering from a surfeit of freedom in her personal choices, let me know if that needs further clarification.