Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, has overhauled its moderation policies to allow users to use anti-LGBTQ rhetoric or insult LGBTQ people in the name of “free speech.”
Meta announced the change on January 7, noting that it was eliminating its third-party fact-checking system and replacing it with a user-based “Community Notes” model similar to the one employed by X.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg further announced the company would be relocating its content moderation teams from California to Texas to “help remove the concern that biased employees are overly censoring content.”
All of it is being done in the name of promoting “free expression,” with Meta kowtowing to right-wing MAGA critics who claim the platform has limited the visibility of posts from conservatives or and has censored “free speech” as it pertains to religious or social issues, such as users who refuse to recognize transgender identity as valid.
Perhaps most appallingly, Meta has updated its “Hateful Conduct” policy to allow the use of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and offensive terms, according to The Verge.
In its revised policy, Meta defines prohibited “hateful conduct” as direct attacks against people — rather than concepts or institutions — on the basis of protected characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, national origin, disability, religious affiliation, caste, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity, or affliction with a serious disease.
It also considers age a protected characteristic when referenced along with another protected characteristic.
However, it appears to have carved out a host of exemptions that will specifically allow certain types of hate-based speech directed at LGBTQ individuals on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.
For example, Meta claims that it prohibits “calls for exclusion or segregation when targeting people based on protected characteristics.” However, it will allow users to argue in favor of excluding LGBTQ individuals from certain careers or public spaces.
Instances of this include occasions when an organization refuses to hire — or fires — an LGBTQ person due to an employer’s sincerely held religious beliefs opposing homosexuality.
Additionally, Meta will also allow users to call for barring access to sex-specific spaces such as restrooms, sports and sports leagues, health and support groups, and sex-segregated educational institutions.
The new policy prohibits Meta users from making allegations or assertions about another person’s “mental characteristics,” such saying a person is stupid, intellectually deficient, or mentally ill.
But the company, in its commitment to “free expression,” will allow “allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism (sic) and homosexuality.”
While other forms of “hateful conduct” are technically banned, it remains to be seen whether Meta will actually enforce its ban on such speech. For example, the LGBTQ media advocacy group GLAAD reported last year that Meta platforms have been deficient in removing posts that violated the company’s previous restrictions on “hate speech.”
According to a report from the liberal-leaning media watchdog organization Media Matters for America, even prior to the recent policy changes, Meta failed to protect users from so-called “hate speech.” It alleges that Meta allowed networks of right-wing media outlets to spout and even amplify anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.
For instance, Meta failed to moderate accounts employing “hate speech,” such as “Libs of TikTok” and “Gays Against Groomers,” whose anti-LGBTQ content and rhetoric has been blamed for inciting threats of violence against LGBTQ people and organizations.
According to Media Matters, Meta has also profited from anti-LGBTQ hate speech, earning millions in revenue.
A March 2023 report claimed that the conservative media outlet The Daily Wire profited from at least 558 ads promoting anti-LGBTQ content, earning at least $5.7 million.
Other studies found that Meta had failed to moderate hundreds of ads employing the anti-LGBTQ “groomer” slur, even though Meta claimed to have banned the term from its platforms.
Still another study alleged that, between March 2023 and August 2024, Meta failed to enforce its previous “hate speech” policy, allowing at least 100 posts containing an anti-trans slur to remain on its platforms.
Kayla Gogarty, research director for Media Matters, responded to Meta’s revised policies in a statement.
“Both the substance of the changes, and the messaging from Meta, mirror — and are seemingly a direct appeal to — Trump and MAGA media, who have spent years claiming to be defenders of free expression and victims of censorship,” she said.
Additionally, journalist Taylor Lorenz reported on her User MagSubstack that Meta was restricting content with LGBTQ-related hashtags from searches on Instagram, categorizing content employing those hashtags as “sensitive content” or “sexually suggestive content.”
GLAAD blasted the most recent changes announced by Zuckerberg, alleging that Meta’s new policy will result in platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Threads becoming “unsafe landscapes filled with dangerous hate speech, violence, harassment, and misinformation,” particularly with respect to LGBTQ identity.
“Meta is giving the green light for people to target LGBTQ people, women, immigrants, and other marginalized groups with violence, vitriol, and dehumanizing narratives,” GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement. “With these changes, Meta is continuing to normalize anti-LGBTQ hatred for profit — at the expense of its users and true freedom of expression.”
A coalition of celebrities has launched a foundation to support LGBTQ filmmakers whose projects may be rejected or sidelined as studios scale back diversity initiatives under pressure from cultural conservatives.
The Necessary Foundation was created to offer financing and other opportunities to help LGBTQ filmmakers establish themselves in the industry. Founding board members include Alan Cumming, Bowen Yang, Lena Waithe, and Adam Goldman -- the latter of whom will serve as the foundation's executive director, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Boston University President Melissa Gilliam is defending the school’s removal of Pride flags and pro-LGBTQ signs from campus buildings over spring break.
According to Boston public radio station WBUR, the university removed Pride flags displayed in outward-facing windows, including ones in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, the BU Children’s Center, and from a fourth-floor office window belonging to professor Nathan Phillips overlooking Commonwealth Avenue.
Phillips said the flag wasn’t confiscated but was taken down and left on a chair with a note stating it had been removed “per University policy” for being outward-facing. It added that university affiliates are “welcome to display signs, posters, or flags on authorized bulletin boards or on interior walls of their private offices.”
Poland’s Supreme Administrative Court has ordered a local civil registry to record the marriage of a Polish same-sex couple who wed in Germany in 2018.
The case involved JC-T, who holds both Polish and German citizenship, and MT, a Polish national. The couple married in Germany while living there under EU free-movement rules. When they later returned to Poland, local authorities refused to register their marriage, citing the constitution’s definition of marriage as between a man and a woman.
The couple challenged the decision, and after exhausting their appeals in Polish courts, the case went to the Court of Justice of the European Union. The court was asked to clarify whether EU law -- including free-movement rights and the EU Charter’s ban on discrimination -- requires countries that do not allow same-sex marriage to recognize valid marriages from other member states.
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