Meta Now Allows Users To Report Gay And Trans People With ‘Mental Illness’

Trim he announced a list of major changes to its current regulatory policies, including its termination fact-checking and “removal” of restrictions on speech on “topics such as immigration, gender identity and gender identity” which the company describes as political and controversial. “It’s not right that things can be said on TV or under Congress, but not on our platforms,” ​​said the newly elected head of Meta. Joel Kaplan wrote in a blog post to describe the changes.

In the following video, the CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, explained the rules that the company established in these areas “not related to the main issues.”

In line with the announcement, the company also made several changes to its community guidelines, more rules that outline what types of content are prohibited on Meta platforms, including Instagram, Threads, and Facebook. Some of the most impressive changes were made to Meta’s “Hostile Behavior” policy, which covers immigration and gender issues.

In a notable change, the company now says it allows “predictions of mental illness or abnormality based on gender or sexual orientation, taking into account political and religious issues related to transgenderism and homosexuality and using non-offensive language such as ‘weird’ .’

In other words, Meta now appears to allow users to accuse transgender or gay people of being mentally ill because of their gender identity and preferences. The company did not respond to requests for clarification on the policy.

Meta spokesperson Corey Chambliss told WIRED that these restrictions will be released worldwide. When asked if the company would follow different policies in countries with stricter hate speech laws, Chambliss said to point to Meta’s latest guidelines for dealing with local laws.

Other major changes made to the Meta’s Hateful Conduct rule on Tuesday include:

• Removing language that prohibits targeting people based on their “protected characteristics,” which include race, ethnicity, and gender identity, when combined with “claims that they have or spread the coronavirus.” Without this, it would be reasonable to say, for example, that the Chinese people are responsible for the Covid-19 epidemic.
• The new addition seems to provide space for people who want to write about how, for example, women should not be allowed to serve in the military or men should not be allowed to teach math because of gender. Meta now allows content that challenges “gender-related restrictions on military, law enforcement, and educational services. We also allow content based on sexual orientation, where the content is based on religious beliefs.”
• Another change describes what Meta allows for offline conversations. It now states that “people sometimes use sexist language when discussing opportunities in areas that are often limited by sex or gender, such as access to restrooms, private schools, the military, law enforcement, or educational, health or support services. groups.” In the past, this image was only available for health discussions and gay support groups.
• Meta’s Hateful Conduct policy previously opened by stating that hate speech “incites online violence.” The provision, which had been in the policy since 2019, was removed from the revised version on Tuesday. (In 2018, following reports from human rights groups, Meta said he agreed that his platform was used to incite violence against religious minorities in Myanmar).