Meta Now Allowing More Serious Anti-Queer Rhetoric, Including Characterizations of 'Mental Illness,' 'Abnormality'

Reports say that Facebook and Instagram owner Meta will now allow anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric that attacks queer people as "mentally ill" and "abnormal," while also giving up on fact checking.

Wired reported on the company discarding some of its content moderation guardrails, noting that "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.'"

"It's not right that things can be said on TV or the floor of Congress, but not on our platforms," Joel Kaplan, the company's chief global affairs officer, explained.

In other words, the justification for the change seems to be that since some people are hurling medically inaccurate claims and inflammatory slurs in other places, they ought to be allowed to say those things on Meta's social media platforms.

The shedding of those guardrails also means that Meta will now allow users to deploy arguments for discrimination based on gender, including with respect to career paths (such as teaching or law enforcement) and military service.

Similar license is now granted to Meta's users when it comes to discussions of individuals being barred from certain spaces based on gender, Wired relayed.

Meta's revised guidelines stipulate that the company will "also allow the same content based on sexual orientation, when the content is based on religious beliefs."

One major change sees racially based accusations around public health now being permitted, particularly when it comes to claims that people of Asian ancestry are somehow responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, Wired noted.

Some of the company's restrictions on hate speech will remain in place – at least for now.

"The update does preserve language toward the bottom of the policy prohibiting content that could 'incite imminent violence or intimidation,'" Wired reported, while bans "on Holocaust denials, blackface, insinuations about Jewish people controlling the media" and "comparing Black people to 'farm equipment'" will remain in effect.

"In keeping with the previous version, Meta continues to ban calling immigrants, as well as people in 'protected characteristic' groups, insects, animals, pathogens, or 'other sub-human life forms' as well as alleging that they are criminals or immoral," Wired detailed.

How that might change in response to television personalities, members of Congress, or other people in real life framing their discussions of such issues remains to be seen.