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In its effort to restore “free expression” to Facebook, Meta has updated its rules to let users post content alleging that gay and trans people suffer from mental illness.
The change is explicitly mentioned in Meta’s revised hateful conduct policy, which the social network updated on Tuesday amid its push to roll back its content moderation under an incoming Trump presidency.
As Wired reports, the revised policy now states: “We do allow 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.’”
GLAAD, an LGBTQ advocacy group, also pointed out the rules now permit calls for "exclusion or use [of] insulting language in the context of discussing political or religious topics, such as when discussing transgender rights, immigration, or homosexuality."
Meanwhile, another change lets users post about “arguing for gender-based limitations of military, law enforcement, and teaching jobs." The rules add: "We also allow the same content based on sexual orientation, when the content is based on religious beliefs."
Meta didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But in a blog post on Tuesday, the company’s new Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan wrote: “We’re getting rid of a number of restrictions on topics like immigration, gender identity and gender that are the subject of frequent 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.”
The company’s hateful conduct policy was revised as Meta ditched its existing fact-checking system for a Community Notes-style model currently found on X/Twitter. In addition, the social network is moving its trust and safety team from California to Texas.
"This will help remove the concern that biased employees are overly censoring content,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Threads.
In a video, Zuckerberg also said the company's restrictions on immigration and gender topics had become "out of touch with mainstream discourse."
"What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it's gone too far," he said, adding that Meta plans on returning political content to users' feeds, citing user requests, after downranking it a few years ago.
Not surprisingly, the company revamp is facing a backlash from some users who claim Meta is caving to Donald Trump, who previously threatened to imprison Zuckerberg if re-elected to the White House. “Zuck?…more like Cuck,” wrote one user on Threads.
Meanwhile, GLAAD said: "Without these necessary hate speech and other policies, Meta is giving the green light for people to target LGBTQ people, women, immigrants, and other marginalized groups with violence, vitriol, and dehumanizing narratives."
Last year, GLAAD released a report that found Meta had done a poor job of policing anti-LGBTQ posts and noted that "extreme anti-trans hate content remains widespread across Instagram, Facebook, and Threads."