New York, U.S. – Meta, the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Thread, now allows its billions of users to accuse lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders, and queer (LGBTQ) people of being “mentally ill.”
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, recently announced changes to its policies, including the end of its fact-checking program. This has led to concerns about increased misinformation and hate speech on the platform.
These policy changes come in the context of Meta’s shift towards a ‘community notes’ system for content moderation, similar to what is used by X, aiming to enhance free speech by loosening restrictions on topics like gender and sexuality.
GLAAD has criticised these changes, stating that Zuckerberg’s removal of fact-checking and hate speech policies makes Meta’s platforms less safe for users, particularly affecting the LGBTQ community by rolling back protections against hateful rhetoric.
Responding to Meta, GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis, said: “Zuckerberg’s removal of fact-checking programs and industry-standard hate speech policies make Meta’s platforms unsafe places for users and advertisers alike. 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. With these changes, Meta is continuing to normalize anti-LGBTQ hatred for profit — at the expense of its users and true freedom of expression. Fact-checking and hate speech policies protect free speech.”
Stating that, “Our policies are designed to allow room for these types of speech,” Meta’s new policies now expressly allow such anti-LGBTQ speech as: “Insulting language in the context of discussing political or religious topics, such as when discussing transgender rights, immigration, or homosexuality” and “allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism [sic] and homosexuality…’” Meta has also removed clauses prohibiting the following: “the usage of slurs that are used to attack people on the basis of their protected characteristics” and “Self-admission to intolerance on the basis of protected characteristics, including but not limited to: homophobic, islamophobic, racist.”
The changes coincide with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that the company is ending its fact-checking program, and replacing it with a “community notes”-style system. The company also stated that Meta will move its US-based content review team to Texas. In December, Zuckerberg said he seeks an “active role” in shaping tech policy in the upcoming Trump administration.
Meta first started its efforts to combat hate speech in the 2010s, adding improvements over the last decade. Meta formalized its hate speech policy in 2018, clarifying definitions of hate speech including attacks based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, caste, sex, gender identity, and disability.
As highlighted in GLAAD’s 2024 Social Media Safety Index (SMSI) report, Meta’s Facebook, Threads, and Instagram are largely failing to mitigate dangerous anti-LGBTQ hate and disinformation. The June 2024 SMSI — in which Meta received a failing score for the fourth year — also recommends that Meta and other companies better train moderators on the needs of LGBTQ users.