Meta’s Relaxed Guidelines Allow Anti-LGBTQ Hate Speech

Meta’s new hate speech guidelines explicitly allow users to call LGBTQ people “mentally ill.”

Meta’s new guidelines prohibit insults about someone’s intellect or mental illness, as have previous iterations. But the guidelines now include a caveat for accusing LGBTQ people of being mentally ill because they are gay or transgender.

[image or embed] — NBC News (@nbcnews.com) January 7, 2025 at 2:58 PM

From NBC News:

Meta will allow its billions of social media users to accuse people of being mentally ill based on their sexuality or gender identity, among broader changes it made to its moderation policies and practices Tuesday.

The company’s new guidelines prohibit insults about someone’s intellect or mental illness on Facebook, Instagram and Threads, as have previous iterations. However, the latest guidelines now include a caveat for accusing LGBTQ people of being mentally ill because they are gay or transgender.

“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 and common non-serious usage of words like ‘weird,’” the revised company guidelines read.

Yesterday I shared the news that Meta is scrapping its fact-checking program and will instead use an approach similar to X’s “Community Notes,” where users can post suggested “notes” on other user’s content. Meta also admitted it had been blocking teens from finding content tagged with LGBTQ-related hashtags for months. Read more at NBC News.

Meta has quietly removed major sections of its hate speech policy protecting LGBTQ people, people of color, women, immigrants, and other marginalized groups. Today’s alarming policy changes will allow anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, and cease to protect LGBTQ users from being targeted with such attacks

[image or embed] — GLAAD (@glaad.bsky.social) January 7, 2025 at 1:29 PM