Meta announced a series of major updates to its content moderation policies today, including ending its fact-checking partnerships and “getting rid” of restrictions on speech about “topics like immigration, gender identity and gender” that the company describes as frequent subjects of 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,” Meta’s newly appointed chief global affairs officer, Joel Kaplan, wrote in a blog post outlining the changes.
In an accompanying video, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg described the company’s current rules in these areas as “just out of touch with mainstream discourse.”
In tandem with this announcement, the company made a number of updates across its Community Guidelines, an extensive set of rules that outline what kinds of content are prohibited on Meta’s platforms, including Instagram, Threads, and Facebook. Some of the most striking changes were made to Meta’s “Hateful Conduct” policy, which covers discussions on immigration and gender.
In a notable shift, the company now says it allows “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.’”
In other words, Meta now appears to permit users to accuse transgender or gay people of being mentally ill because of their gender expression and sexual orientation. The company did not respond to requests for clarification on the policy.
“getting rid” of restrictions on speech about “topics like immigration, gender identity and gender” that the company describes as frequent subjects of 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,”
Yet when my mom tried to post about a museum visit, Facebook wouldn’t let her because it contained the word “Lenin”. Interesting.
META is failing. Mark is bending the knee because that’s his only move.
Joel David Kaplan (born 1969) is an American political advisor, lobbyist, and attorney. In January 2025, it was announced that Kaplan will become the president of global affairs of Meta Platforms, owner of Facebook, in Spring 2025.[1][2][3] He has been the company’s vice president of global public policy since 2011.
A longtime Republican political operative, Kaplan served eight years in the George W. Bush administration, including as White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy.[4]
Embarrassing no matter what your politics are. The fuck is the former White House Deputy Chief of Staff (the successor of Karl Rove under GWB, ffs) doing at Facebook? Did the job offer to Hitler fall through?
He praised X, a competitor, in his video announcement. I guess Musk was right. “Zuck is a cuck.”
Presumably they’ll roll back their censorship of Palestinian journalists now they love free speech so much.
you see, free speech is only for reactionaries.
That’s pretty much what conservative/right-wing ‘freedom’ is: freedom for me but not for thee.
I stopped letting Meta take my attention once they started making my feed fill itself with “reccomended” “you might like” pages and profiles that I at no point ever clicked on or searched for.
before, my feed was exclusively my friends content, and pages I followed.
now, they fill the gaps with evangelicals, gambling, and idiots posting chinese and russian war propaganda.
yup, get the fuck out. im done.
Oh it’s a complete ghost town. Absolutely useless as actual social media. I suppose you could try starring/favoriting all your friends lol…
My entire feed is just nonsense now. Last year a guy I knew from my Warcraft days had cancer while a relative in Canada had a baby.
They both posted these things on Facebook.
What Facebook showed me was constant spam, so now I just see chess puzzle channels from India, street cooking videos from places with no hygiene laws, magic eye pictures and retro games. I’ve never asked it for any of these things, yet some algorithm detected I paused for a millisecond while scrolling past them so now that’s all I get. Fuck the people I know, right?
It used to be useful for exactly one thing and it can’t even do that any more. The only way you can actually see a proper feed without spam is to go into a person/group’s profile directly.
I use the website / app for exactly one purpose, marketplace. buy and sell shit.
I still have messenger for work purposes, as well as some family and friends. but the “Feed”. the status updates, Fuck no. burn it all.
And you can’t even browse marketplace on the mobile site. It wants you to install their app.
And you get ads for anything you look up on Marketplace.
I get the sense a bunch of y’all weren’t around for the early internet.
Lots of dumb people out there and they’re doing to say all kinds of deranged shit. Grow a pair and move on.
I’ve been on the Web since mid 90s. It is 100x worse now, due to systemic promotion of fascists.
“It’s not right that things can be said on TV or the floor of Congress, but not on our platforms,” Meta’s newly appointed chief global affairs officer, Joel Kaplan, wrote in a blog post outlining the changes.
This is the same Joel Kaplan that participated in the brooks brothers riot stopping the recount of the ballots during the bush v gore election in 2000 where the republicans stole the election forever changing the course of American history.
You can now refer to women as property on Facebook and they are A-OK with that! But you will, and it has happened to me, catch an instant ban if you say all men are trash.
Maybe it’s just me but I don’t think people should be saying or be allowed to say either of those two things. Neither of those two things are good for anyone.
I suppose that was ops point
In the context I said it myself it was because of Trump the rapist. I am very tired of women being raped and everything that comes with conservatives normalizing it.
I hate fuckerberg but there’s a possibility he’s playing 3d chess this time.
The amount of backlash and outrage that letting all the bullshit through because politicians are spewing it and being cheered might cause the politicians doing it to have to change. Generally no one wants the new policy.
They clamor for “free speech” but once they see how it devolves the public sentiment will say “OH GOD WE TAKE IT BACK”
Facebook is a shitty place to be. In related “no shit, sherlock” news, the sun is still hot.
I agree but the problem is that there is a huge percentage of the population that use this dumb site as a way to collect and gather all their information about the world. The problem is not so much that fb changed, the problem is that so many people rely on it.
downvoted for calling it Meta
“Facebook, Instagram and Threads now lets users say gay and trans people have ‘mental illness’”
There, I corrected the title for you. Happy?
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I’ll bite. Meta, obviously, never actually cared about free speech. Zuckerberg also said that they are about to flood the platforms with AI bots to increase engagement. I’d say getting rid of fact checkers is only to avoid having their own bots automatically brought down by their own moderation. The rest is a façade
More exploitation of the seniors who are the few people left
Astute observation. I’m glad I stopped using the platform years ago but it seems like they’re focused on trying to innovate their tech more than the actual engagement.
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Delete it
