Mark Zuckerberg continues to deepen the pivot of his social media company to please the international far right. After assuming the theses of Donald Trump and Elon Musk regarding independent data verification programs and describing the labeling of hoaxes as “censorship”, he has now decided to change the moderation rules to unprotect the LGTBI group, one of the most attacked in social networks.
From now on, users of Instagram, Facebook or Threads (the Meta network that emulates the old Twitter) will be able to call gay or trans people “mentally ill”, “immoral”, “abnormal” or affirm that they are not “real” men or women. The new rules also make it possible to deny its own existence, associating it with disorders that can be treated with conversion therapies.
This is reflected in the latest modification of the Meta community standards document on hate speech. “We do allow accusations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given the political and religious discourse on transsexuality and homosexuality,” reads the new wordingwhich also tolerates “the non-serious habitual use” of words like “weird.”
We do allow accusations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given the political and religious discourse on transsexuality and homosexuality.
Goal
— about new hate speech policies
The change in policies clashes head-on with the positioning of the main psychiatric associations or the World Health Organization (WHO) itself, which ruled more than three decades ago that homosexuality is not an illness or a psychiatric disorder. He did the same with transsexuality in 2018.
“Identifying as transgender does not constitute a mental disorder. For these people, the fundamental problem lies in finding affordable resources, such as counseling, hormone therapy, medical procedures, and the social support necessary to freely express their gender identity and minimize discrimination,” emphasizes the American Psychological Association.
However, Meta justifies that “sometimes” its users use expressions that “incite exclusion or use insulting language in the context of debate on political and religious issues, such as when discussing the rights of transgender people, immigration or homosexuality”. “Our policies have been designed to accommodate this type of speech,” he clarifies.
Within this policy, the multinational will tolerate users stating that women or LGTBI people are not equally prepared to be teachers, police officers or soldiers: “We do allow content that advocates for limitations on access to jobs in bodies.” military, security forces and bodies, and the educational sector based on gender. “We also allow this type of content based on sexual orientation, when it is based on religious beliefs.”
Follow “the dominant discourse”
Zuckerberg announced this policy change in his video statement last week, in which he notified the end of the hoax verification program on Facebook and Instagram. “We are going to simplify our content policies and eliminate a lot of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are not in line with the dominant discourse,” he warned.
“What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to silence opinions and exclude people with different ideas, and this has gone too far,” Zuckerberg continued.
What began as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to silence opinions and exclude people with different ideas, and this has gone too far
Mark Zuckerberg
— CEO of Meta
The decision has provoked criticism from LGTBI associations. For Glaad, the largest organization of its kind in the world, the result of this new policy will be “that Instagram, Facebook and Threads become unsafe environments full of dangerous hate speech, violence, harassment and misinformation.” These “hate-driven” changes, he says, “will harm users and make Meta platforms unsafe for everyone. Meta is now an anti-LGBTQ company.”
“It has neither head nor tail,” laments David Armenteros, vice president of the LGTBI+ State Federation: “We know the brutal impact that the invisibility of the group can have. That they now allow your reality to be denied for reasons of religious or political beliefs is paddling on the wrong side. We are seeing hate attacks increase, we find them more and more in classrooms. These types of messages reach students more and more and that has consequences on a day-to-day basis.”
Situations like these have led nine out of ten trans people to hide their gender identity in at least one area of their life, as reported in the Transaludes survey, carried out by the Carlos III Health Institute. This study, the first analysis of the health of trans and non-binary people in Spain, revealed that 10% of them had encountered health personnel who considered them “sick.”
Meta’s decision is in line with the general position of X, where Elon Musk has been increasingly permissive with attacks on the LGTBI community. Musk himself has declared that his daughter, who changed gender, is “dead” to him and blames the “woke virus” for her transition. Both Musk and now Zuckerberg frame controlling hate speech as “censorship.”
With this they want to attract people and they are trying to do so by giving hate speech a microphone.
David Armenteros
— vice president LGTBI+ Federation
“It is not true that more hate messages are censored than before,” Armenteros disagrees. “It seems overwhelming to me that something like that is said when every week we see cases in which LGTBI content is eliminated. I have had content about LGTBIphobia deleted for talking about these issues and, however, they can call me sick without any problem because that is freedom of opinion,” he asserts.
The activist also rejects that Zuckerberg has undertaken these changes only because of the “cultural turning point” that Trump’s victory represents. “I think there is more at stake. It’s the money. We know the problems you are having and how are falling in number of users on networks like Facebook. With this they want to attract people and they are trying to do so by giving a microphone to hate speech,” he says.
In his conversation with this medium, Armenteros asks the EU to “react” to these movements by Musk and Zuckerberg, but Brussels drags its feet on this issue and experts warn that its capacity for movement is reduced, as this medium has reported.
Elimination of Diversity teams
In addition to the moderation changes, Meta is also making internal changes. Last Friday he informed his employees that he will eliminate the company’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) team. This aimed to promote diversity and inclusion in the workforce, ensuring that people of all backgrounds, identities and perspectives feel valued and can thrive.
The elimination is accompanied by the repeal of policies that ensure that the corporation’s hiring processes are inclusive, as well as all rules for racial or gender parity for management positions. Nor will it demand any conditions from its suppliers in this regard as it has been doing until now.
In an internal memo published by Axios and confirmed by several American media, Meta recognizes that diverse teams “are better at innovating, solving complex problems and identifying new opportunities.” Despite this, it imposes the aforementioned changes “given the changing legal and political landscape.” “The term ‘DEI’ has also acquired a controversial character, in part because some understand it as a practice that suggests preferential treatment to some groups over others,” he justifies.
This is a policy that other large American multinationals have already adopted. Ford, Walmart or Boeing have also suppressed this type of internal equity teams, highly criticized by Trumpism.
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