Drastic Changes To Meta Putting LGBTQIA People At Risk
Image: Image: Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook
Facebook founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced drastic changes across social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, with the company reducing censorship, getting rid of fact-checkers, and recommending more political content.
In a video posted to Facebook on Tuesday 7, Zuckerberg said that Donald Trump’s election win represents a “cultural tipping point” in favour of free speech, with the president-elect already praising the changes that will begin to be rolled out in the US.
The move comes shortly after Zuckerberg visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago and donated $1 million to his inauguration.
“We’re going back to our roots, and (will) focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms,” Zuckerberg said.
“After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote non-stop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy. We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth but the fact checkers have been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they created.”
The decision was made after seeing the approach X took with community notes, which relies on users to add context to combat misinformation. Zuckerberg said the move “[helped to] empower their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading.”
The change will allow Meta to “get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender, which are out of touch with mainstream discourse.”
“What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it’s gone too far.” Zuckerberg said.
Meta’s content moderation teams will be moved from California to Texas, where Zuckerberg says “there is less concern about the bias of our teams”.
Safeguards against dehumanising language have also been removed, with the revised guidelines permitting rhetoric such as the denial of the existence of protected groups, the comparison of women and queer people to inanimate objects, and referring to transgender people as “it”.
Meta has also removed its clear definitions of slurs, and has shifted from using the term “hate speech” to “hateful conduct”.
Changes met with immediate critique
Asked about Meta’s in a press conference on Wednesday morning, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that “social media [has] a social responsibility and they should fulfil it.”
“I said this morning that the criticism that social media will make about our decision and
legislation to ban social media for those under 16 is one that we don’t resile from. We will stand up for Australia’s national interests.”
GLAAD president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis expressed concern for the safety of LGBTQIA+ people and other marginalised groups, saying that the changes to fact-checkers and hate speech will make Meta platforms unsafe for all.
“Without these necessary hate speech and other policies, Meta is giving the green light for people to target LGBTQ people, women, immigrants, and other marginalized groups with violence, vitriol, and dehumanizing narratives.”
“With these changes, Meta is continuing to normalize anti-LGBTQ hatred for profit — at the expense of its users and true freedom of expression. Fact-checking and hate speech policies protect free speech.”
Greens communications spokesperson, Sarah Hanson-Young told ABC’s RN Breakfast that the move was “dangerous”.
“It’s going to mean a free-for-all on misinformation, disinformation, abuse and trolling,” Hanson-Young said.
“I think this is a very, very dangerous move at a time when members of the community, parents, young people, women in particular, are increasingly concerned of the unsafe environment on these big platforms.”
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