this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2025
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Meta announced a series of major updates to its content moderation policies today, including ending its fact-checking partnerships and “getting rid” of restrictions on speech about “topics like immigration, gender identity and gender” that the company describes as frequent subjects of political discourse and debate. “It’s not right that things can be said on TV or the floor of Congress, but not on our platforms,” Meta’s newly appointed chief global affairs officer, Joel Kaplan, wrote in a blog post outlining the changes.

In an accompanying video, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg described the company’s current rules in these areas as “just out of touch with mainstream discourse.”

In tandem with this announcement, the company made a number of updates across its Community Guidelines, an extensive set of rules that outline what kinds of content are prohibited on Meta’s platforms, including Instagram, Threads, and Facebook. Some of the most striking changes were made to Meta’s “Hateful Conduct” policy, which covers discussions on immigration and gender.

In a notable shift, the company now says it allows “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.’”

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

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

Your response doesn't address my initial point. Again, don't make that false equivalence.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

The factuality of this is irrelevant as 99% of the time this will be used as a weapon to bully people. No one on facebook talks about metaphysics. Does anyone really think that there are meta discussions about the origins "of the gay" and what it means in our collective society?

Americans really fucked the world with their elections this year and it's just the beginning.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

I'm sure I am speaking to the choir here, but body dismorphia is the mental illness here, and transgenderism is the cure.

Pre-transition transgender people are mentally ill, due to the emotional pain that comes from being trapped in a body that they don't feel represents themselves. The cure for that illness is, of course, transitioning into the gender that makes them feel like themselves. So, a fully transitioned transgender person is no longer mentally ill, at least from body dismorphia.

Therefore, people who are against things like puberty blockers and HRT are literally trying to keep mentally ill people from getting better. I am okay with body dismorphia being referred to as a mental illness, in accordance with medical science. The fact that it is a mental illness shows the cruelness of the people fighting against the literal cure for it.

However, I am sure Facebook is going to just let anyone refer to perfectly happy and fully-transition transgendered people as mentally ill, which is most definitely not true, and shouldn't be allowed.

Obligatory Fuck Zuck.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Wouldn't that make it a physical illness, not a mental illness?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago

In a way, you could say that. It's also a societal one. Its a whole lot of problems rolled up into one, really.

Body dismorphia is only a mental illness in the sense that it causes a lot of emotional distress. Not in the sense that it is a delusion or the person is crazy, or anything.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

Based on what I've seen on the platform I didn't realize they even had that rule in the first place

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Meta sucks and allowing accusations of mental illness is shitty.

That said, "allegations of abnormality" and "weird" are hard to take issue with. There is nothing at all wrong with being gay or trans, but by the numbers it is absolutely "weird" and "abnormal". This is exactly what the word "queer" means, by definition.

Accusing of mental illness is reproachable, but weird and abnormal are both accurate. You no what else is abnormal? Being exceptional. These are not bad conditions to find yourself in, but neither are they "normal" by population.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Don't equate "weird" and "abnormal" here? One word has an exclusively negative connotation, the other is a much more considered, clinical word.

They are not the same thing

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

No?

Top definitions by Merriam Webster for weird:

  1. Of strange or extraordinary character: Odd, Fantastic

  2. of, relating to, or caused by witchcraft or the supernatural: Magical

People use either of these words to mean something negative, just like they do for any word that implies being different from the majority. That doesn't change their definitions though.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

Being an executive of Meta who succumb to conservashit rhetoric is a mental ilness.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

I’ve always seen people say and post this. The fact checking was selectively enforced. Better to have none than a half assed attempt

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

People need to get a grip. This really feels like mass psychosis.

  1. Walk into Nazi bar.
  2. Pay dues to be a member (consume advertising, provide personal data).
  3. Be astonished at the fascist rhetoric of the Nazi bar!

If it were possible it would be fascinating to study the brains of people who do this. Is it old scar tissue from physical blows? Lesions from infections or illness? Just too much drugs and alcohol? Perhaps it's a vascular issue from failing organs and too much salt? Food dye, radiation, lead?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Comparing Facebook to a Nazi bar is ridiculous.

Facebook, just like all social media companies, has continually used the overton window as its standard for acceptable content. When political leanings shift, the way the company polices content on its platform, chooses what topics to boost or bury, and decides what topics to promote as part of its corporate culture changes.

It is by its very nature the thing that maximizes the political acceptableness of content for advertisers to appear next to. Most people joined Facebook when the political climate was nowhere near as right-wing as it is now, so it's not like they walked in, saw a sign that said "We're Nazis" and went "okay, this is fine."

The fact they're changing their hateful conduct policy now is what's turning them into the Nazi bar, they weren't always that way. (and yes, I'm aware Facebook and Zuck did tons of horrible shit in the past, but as a platform it wasn't anywhere near the level of terrible it will be now, nor did it have anywhere near Nazi levels of political leanings)

And not to mention how the network effect kind of changes this from "Nazi Bar" to "Nazi City" because it has a much more difficult process to escape due to it quite literally holding you and all your friends, family, photos, and videos hostage. There's less of a choice when it comes to leaving platforms that ensnare you with network effects than there is to simply leave a bar.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Comparing Facebook to a Nazi bar is ridiculous.

not really considering meta has several nazis on their board.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

Who exactly? At present I'm wholly unaware of anybody on the FB board who I'd call a Nazi.

I'm genuinely asking by the way, that isn't meant to be some kind of rebuttal.

However, I would again note the fact that any current board members were likely not on the board when many Facebook users joined, (and the lock-in they experience keeps them there) and even if they were, what kind of person is ever aware of individual corporate board members?

Extrapolating that back out to your Nazi bar analogy, that would be like if you went into a bar, the people in there were your friends and family, the workers at the front were normal people, but the person who owned the LLC behind the bar was a Nazi. In that case, to "be astonished at the fascist rhetoric of the Nazi bar" isn't exactly unexpected!

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