Meta now lets users call women property and gay people mentally ill

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".

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." 

Meta explicitly permits anti-LGBTQ content

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. 

Such harmful ostracisation may often be expressed as, for example, allegations of mental illness or abnormality based on gender or sexual orientation.

"Despite the persistence of stereotypes that portray lesbian, gay, and bisexual people as disturbed, several decades of research and clinical experience have led all mainstream medical and mental health organizations in this country to conclude that these orientations represent normal forms of human experience," the APA states.

Meta's amended Hateful Conduct policy also explicitly allows content arguing that sexual orientation should preclude people from working in the military, law enforcement, or teaching, provided such arguments are based upon religious beliefs. Though there is a caveat: Meta also demands no such religious justification for the same discriminatory arguments based on gender.

Sarah Kate Ellis, President and CEO of LGBTQ advocacy organisation GLAAD, has stated that Meta's changes have given a "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," said Ellis. "Fact-checking and hate speech policies protect free speech."

Mashable has reached out to Meta to inquire whether it consulted with any advocacy groups prior to amending its policy.

Meta aligns itself more closely with Trump in lead-up to inauguration

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."

Some would argue that this is more an indictment on the state of Congress than justification for more divisive, harmful content on social media. But with highly divisive Republican leader Donald Trump resuming office as the U.S. President in less than two weeks, it benefits Meta to loosen its Hateful Conduct policy and try working its way into his good graces.

"The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point toward once again prioritising speech," said Zuckerberg. "So we're going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms."

It seems reasonable to speculate that the changes to Meta's policy may also be designed to preempt a few moderation headaches. The issue of moderation was a significant topic of debate during Trump's first term, with elected officials often making statements on social media which fell afoul of the platforms' policies. Trump himself has frequently been accused of inciting violence by posting divisive rhetoric. Even so, Meta only took the step of suspending then-President Trump from Facebook and Instagram after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, eventually lifting his ban two years later when he was no longer in office.

Meta has been attempting to endear itself to Trump in the lead-up to his second inauguration on Jan. 20. Zuckerberg dined with the president-elect late last year, the tech giant since confirming that it had donated $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund. This Monday Meta announced that three new members had been elected to its board of directors — including Dana White, Ultimate Fighting Champion (UFC) CEO and long-time friend and supporter of Trump.

"[Meta will] Work with President Trump to push back against foreign governments going after American companies to censor more," Zuckerburg declared Tuesday on Threads. "The US has the strongest constitutional protections for free expression in the world and the best way to defend against the trend of government overreach on censorship is with the support of the US government."

Zuckerburg further announced that Meta is moving its trust and safety and content moderation teams out of California, with U.S. content review now to be performed in Texas. The CEO claimed that "this will help remove the concern that biased employees are overly censoring content," though did not explain why he apparently believes that people in Texas are less biased than people in California.