Meta Relaxes Content Policy Around Hateful Rhetoric

A five-minute video posted earlier this month on Facebook announced that Meta’s content policy will relax around misinformation. The video stars Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and makes clear that the site will no longer remove “allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation,” among other false, misleading, or hateful claims against the LGBTQ+ community. 

The changes will affect Facebook and Instagram, where fact-checking departments have been done away with and replaced with “community notes.” This system is already in use on X, formerly known as Twitter, overseen by Zuckerberg’s peer Elon Musk. This, according to Zuckerberg, is because Meta’s fact-checking system, made up of 90 independent contractors, was apparently “too politically biased” and caused “too much censorship.” Protected classes, such as race and ethnicity,  are still safe from inflammatory comments, but the new policy specifically allows for hateful comments against LGBTQ+ people to be posted. 

Meta’s updated Hateful Conduct Policy essentially opens the floodgate for conservatives to spread hateful rhetoric around the queer community. Under the new policy, Facebook and Instagram users will be allowed to call queer people stupid, weird, and mentally ill. The specific verbiage of the policy will also allow “statements denying (the) existence” of LGBTQ+ people. 

The change in policy puts Zuckerberg on a growing list of rich business executives doing the most to impress incoming U.S. President Donald Trump. The “corporatocracy” is most definitely starting to take shape as companies start to pivot towards conservatism. Cozying up to Trump will certainly lead to favorable results, if you happen to be in the 1%. If you’re a queer person, it can only lead one place—downhill. It will certainly be imperative to protect queer people in these times of rising bigotry, that is, if we don’t want a 1984-esque society to come into existence.