Meta now lets users say gay and trans people have a ‘mental illness’

dead Announce A series of major updates to its content moderation policies today, including “rolling out” restrictions on expression around “topics such as immigration, gender identity, and gender” that the company describes as recurring topics of political discourse and debate. “It’s not right for things to be said on TV or on the floor of Congress, but not on our platforms,” said Meta’s newly appointed chief global affairs officer. Joel Kaplan Written in A Blog post Outline the changes.

In an accompanying video, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg described the company’s current rules in these areas as “far removed from mainstream discourse.”

In conjunction with this announcement, the company made a number of updates across its Community Guidelines, a broad set of rules that define the types of content that is prohibited on Meta platforms, including Instagram, Threads, and Facebook. Some of the most striking changes have been made to the Meta’sObnoxious behavior“Politics covering debates about immigration and gender.

In a notable shift, the company now says it allows “claims of mental illness or queerness when based on gender or sexual orientation, given the political and religious discourse around transgenderism and homosexuality and the common, unserious use of words like ‘queer.'”

In other words, Meta now appears to allow users to accuse trans people or gay people of being mentally ill because of their gender expression and sexual orientation. The company did not respond to requests for clarification about the policy.

Meta spokesperson Corey Chambliss told WIRED that these restrictions will be eased globally. When asked if the company would adopt different policies in countries that have strict regulations governing hate speech, Chambliss responded He pointed out Refer to Meta’s current guidelines for processing local laws.

Other significant changes made to Meta’s Hateful Behavior Policy on Tuesday include:

• Remove language that prohibits content that targets people based on their “protected characteristics,” which include race, ethnicity, and gender identity, when combined with “claims that they have or are spreading coronavirus.” Without this provision, it may now be permissible to accuse the Chinese people, for example, of bearing responsibility for the Covid-19 pandemic.
• A new addition seems to make room for people who want to post about how, for example, women shouldn’t be allowed to serve in the military or men shouldn’t be allowed to teach math because of their gender. Meta now allows content that advocates “gender-based restrictions for military, law enforcement, and teaching jobs. We also allow the same content based on sexual orientation, when content is based on religious beliefs.”
• Another update explains what Meta allows in conversations about social exclusion. It now states that “people sometimes use gender-exclusive or gender-exclusive language when discussing access to spaces that are often gender- or gender-restricted, such as access to bathrooms, specific schools, certain military roles, law enforcement, teaching, health or Support.” Groups.” Previously, this exception was only available for discussions about keeping health and support groups limited to one gender.
• Meta’s hateful conduct policy previously opened by noting that hate speech may “promote violence offline.” That sentence, which had been in the policy since 2019, was removed from the updated version released Tuesday. (In 2018, following reports from human rights groups, Meta I confess Its platform has been used to incite violence against religious minorities In Myanmar.) The update maintains language at the bottom of the policy prohibiting content that could “incite imminent violence or intimidation.”