Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta will now let users call gay people “mentally ill,” describe women as property and refer to transgender people as “it.”
In an apparent attempt to curry favor with President-elect Donald Trump, Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday that the parent company of Facebook and Instagram is ditching its fact checkers.
It’s also moving its U.S.-based content moderation team from California to Texas—where there is “less concern about the bias of our teams.”
At the same time, the company quietly changed its hate speech policy to offer fewer protections for women and the LGBTQ+ community, Wired magazine first reported.
Similar to the old policy, the new version defines “hateful conduct” as direct attacks against people based on “protected characteristics,” including race, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, sex and gender identity.
“We remove dehumanizing speech,” the policy says.
But the updated version allows women to be described as property or household objects, and transgender people to be referred to as “it.”
“We also remove harmful stereotypes, which we define as dehumanizing comparisons that have historically been used to attack, intimidate or exclude specific groups, and that are often linked with offline violence,” the policy continues.
In general, that means users aren’t allowed to call entire groups stupid, mentally ill, or inherently less intelligent than other groups—unless the target is part of the LGBTQ+ community.
“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,” according to the policy.
Historically, homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder, with clinical therapists in the 1950s and 1960s claiming they could “cure” gay men in particular. But that classification was axed more than 50 years ago, according to Psychology Today.
Meta’s policy also says it prohibits users from posting “harmful stereotypes historically linked to intimidation or violence.”
The policy changes come amid records numbers of hate crimes committed against LGBTQ+ people, with more than 1,850 violent crimes recorded in 2023, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
