- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
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.
Who the fuck still uses Facebook?
It’s easy to say this when you’re from a younger generation who uses more savvy platforms, but some people never got social media literate past Facebook. To them it’s just somewhere they log in to sometimes to see pictures of their new nephew in British Columbia or to sell an old bike on marketplace, or other really casual use. Maybe they look through their news feed sometimes and laugh at a meme or whatever. They really have no concept of what they are going to be fed and what fake news is even. They’re not ignorant, they just live most of their life away from a screen. And they’re not all older people. I have plenty of friends from church younger than me who have a Facebook that they update maybe once a year with a picture of their kids on Halloween and that’s it, they never do anything else with it. Some people genuinely have no concept of all the evil that’s being wrought on these platforms.
A fuck of a lot of people and that’s a worry.
I need to, because family refuses to use anything else for chat. Or at least with me, as my younger brother likely is an unironic nazi.