Meta Now Lets Users Say Gay and Trans People Have ‘Mental Illness’
www.wired.com
Meta rolled out a number of changes to its “Hateful Conduct” policy Tuesday as part of a sweeping overhaul of its approach toward content moderation.

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.

  • @[email protected]
    3•2 days ago

    What trump wants to do to trans people is the equivalent of lobotomizing everyone with bipolar disorder because you don’t believe the accepted treatments work.

    Gender dyspohoria is a mental health condition the same way ADHD is. Do you run around calling people with ADHD mentally ill? No. And, gender dysphoria is one of the easiest neurodivergent conditions to treat. You let the person be the gender they already know they are. Doing anything else may as well be lobotomizing them. It’s unacceptable and creates more problems. Plus it’s fucking cruel.

    • @[email protected]
      2•2 days ago

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      Gotta have an out group for the in group to vilify and all that :| I do get your point about calling someone with any kind of mental illness “mentally ill”. That does feel rude. It’s “technically correct*” but that doesn’t make it less rude.

      From googling 23% of US adults (assumed because current empire. Even being a US citizen, having some knowledge of history I can’t blame people in other countries hoping/plotting to knock Hamburgerland down a few pegs because that’s what happens, and we are absolutely past the zenith of American dominance) have a diagnosed mental illness. Lotta folks probably are undiagnosed. As is consistent with history, even in this golden era of mental health awareness, trans people are being othered. I would be curious to see some graphs of trans folk being mentioned in newspapers/magazines since the 1920s as a ratio of printed pieces.