Posted on 01/08/2025 9:30:41 AM PST by simpson96
Good news for anyone wanting to spew hate and make the world a worse place: Meta has amended its Hateful Conduct policy to be more permissive to bad behaviour, allowing divisive and discriminatory content to thrive on its platforms. Users on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads are now allowed to call gay people "mentally ill", women "property", and entire ethnicities "diseases".
Instagram blocked LGBTQ+ content by accident, Meta claims The tech giant made significant changes to its Hateful Conduct policy on Tuesday, lifting prohibitions against a wide range of divisive and harmful rhetoric. Notably, Meta's amended policy completely removed restrictions against dehumanising people on the basis of a "protected characteristic" by likening them to certain inanimate objects, filth, and diseases such as cancer. Users are also now permitted to state that protected characteristics don't or shouldn't 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 disease."
Meta further removed its previous acknowledgement that hateful conduct on its platforms "creates an environment of intimidation and exclusion, and in some cases may promote offline violence."
Equally as notable as the restrictions Meta has removed is the content that it now explicitly allows, with harmful anti-LGBTQ rhetoric specifically permitted. In a video posted on Tuesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that the company is removing restrictions that are "out of touch with mainstream discourse."
"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,'" wrote Meta.
The American Psychological Association (APA) is clear that being transgender or same-sex attracted are not mental disorders, as neither cause significant distress or disability. Each was removed from the APA's official list of mental illnesses in 2012 and 1973 respectively. In fact, the APA notes that it is discrimination and lack of acceptance in society which can lead to transgender people suffering from the actual mental disorders of anxiety and depression. (snip)
These changes coincide with Meta's decision to eliminate fact-checkers and replace them with a Community Notes system. Zuckerberg claimed that 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 out 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 platform such content, with Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan stating in a blog post that they have been "limiting legitimate political debate and censoring too much trivial content and subjecting too many people to frustrating enforcement actions."
It appears that in Meta's estimation, subjecting users to enforcement of a conduct policy is less acceptable than subjecting them to dehumanisation.
"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," wrote Kaplan. "It’s not right that things can be said on TV or the floor of Congress, but not on our platforms."
And the people saying these stupid things will be ostracized by the public as it should be. We don’t need a company to be the commie tyrant so-called guardians of free speech.
Most Islamists agree with those statements.
I AM NO ONE’S PROPERTY
She's part of the problem.
Amanda Yeo like so many foreigners and far too many Americans has NO clue about the clear meaning and necessity of freedom of speech.
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