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.

  • Dupree878@lemmy.world
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    6 minutes 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

  • satans_methpipe@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    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?

  • hungryphrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    4 hours ago

    “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,”

    Yet when my mom tried to post about a museum visit, Facebook wouldn’t let her because it contained the word “Lenin”. Interesting.

  • MiDaBa@lemmy.ml
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    4 hours ago

    META is failing. Mark is bending the knee because that’s his only move.

    • dx1@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      Joel David Kaplan (born 1969) is an American political advisor, lobbyist, and attorney. In January 2025, it was announced that Kaplan will become the president of global affairs of Meta Platforms, owner of Facebook, in Spring 2025.[1][2][3] He has been the company’s vice president of global public policy since 2011.

      A longtime Republican political operative, Kaplan served eight years in the George W. Bush administration, including as White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy.[4]

      Embarrassing no matter what your politics are. The fuck is the former White House Deputy Chief of Staff (the successor of Karl Rove under GWB, ffs) doing at Facebook? Did the job offer to Hitler fall through?

    • ThomasCrappersGhost@feddit.uk
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      2 hours ago

      I have this theory that social media platforms only last so long …Facebook was doing a brilliant job of disproving my theory.

  • 31337@sh.itjust.works
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    6 hours ago

    He praised X, a competitor, in his video announcement. I guess Musk was right. “Zuck is a cuck.”

  • DicJacobus@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    I stopped letting Meta take my attention once they started making my feed fill itself with “reccomended” “you might like” pages and profiles that I at no point ever clicked on or searched for.

    before, my feed was exclusively my friends content, and pages I followed.

    now, they fill the gaps with evangelicals, gambling, and idiots posting chinese and russian war propaganda.

    yup, get the fuck out. im done.

    • Soleos@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      Oh it’s a complete ghost town. Absolutely useless as actual social media. I suppose you could try starring/favoriting all your friends lol…

    • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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      6 hours ago

      My entire feed is just nonsense now. Last year a guy I knew from my Warcraft days had cancer while a relative in Canada had a baby.

      They both posted these things on Facebook.

      What Facebook showed me was constant spam, so now I just see chess puzzle channels from India, street cooking videos from places with no hygiene laws, magic eye pictures and retro games. I’ve never asked it for any of these things, yet some algorithm detected I paused for a millisecond while scrolling past them so now that’s all I get. Fuck the people I know, right?

      It used to be useful for exactly one thing and it can’t even do that any more. The only way you can actually see a proper feed without spam is to go into a person/group’s profile directly.

      • crossdl@leminal.space
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        11 minutes ago

        I decided I was going to discontinue using Meta products except to put out an occasional Instagram photo, pushed to Facebook, to tell…people I don’t even talk to anymore, and for good reason…that I was alive and a sight of what I was doing. I discontinued my old Facebook profile and made a new one only for this purpose.

        Because Facebook kind of sees me as a new user, I’m able to see content I wasn’t able to before. And fuck, that place feels like some weird scam and bot flea market.

        I hope it’s soon to die but who knows if it’ll transform into some unmasked arm of the government for surveillance.

      • DicJacobus@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        I use the website / app for exactly one purpose, marketplace. buy and sell shit.

        I still have messenger for work purposes, as well as some family and friends. but the “Feed”. the status updates, Fuck no. burn it all.

  • inv3r5ion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    9 hours ago

    “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.

    This is the same Joel Kaplan that participated in the brooks brothers riot stopping the recount of the ballots during the bush v gore election in 2000 where the republicans stole the election forever changing the course of American history.

  • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    You can now refer to women as property on Facebook and they are A-OK with that! But you will, and it has happened to me, catch an instant ban if you say all men are trash.

    • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
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      8 hours ago

      Maybe it’s just me but I don’t think people should be saying or be allowed to say either of those two things. Neither of those two things are good for anyone.

    • ininewcrow@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      I agree but the problem is that there is a huge percentage of the population that use this dumb site as a way to collect and gather all their information about the world. The problem is not so much that fb changed, the problem is that so many people rely on it.

  • RedBauble@sh.itjust.works
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    14 hours ago

    I’ll bite. Meta, obviously, never actually cared about free speech. Zuckerberg also said that they are about to flood the platforms with AI bots to increase engagement. I’d say getting rid of fact checkers is only to avoid having their own bots automatically brought down by their own moderation. The rest is a façade

    • knightmare1147@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      Astute observation. I’m glad I stopped using the platform years ago but it seems like they’re focused on trying to innovate their tech more than the actual engagement.

  • capital@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    I get the sense a bunch of y’all weren’t around for the early internet.

    Lots of dumb people out there and they’re doing to say all kinds of deranged shit. Grow a pair and move on.

    • dx1@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      I’ve been on the Web since mid 90s. It is 100x worse now, due to systemic promotion of fascists.

    • GrymEdm@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      I’ve been online since the days of dial-up, and even places like 4chan had containment boards specifically set aside for jackasses. If you went to one of those you knew what you were getting into. Not that you wouldn’t find it on other boards, but the content elsewhere was mostly memes, life stories, cooking, vidya, shock content and so on. You could always find stupidity and hatred, but it’s way more common now in terms of # of people posting. With the removal of moderation Facebook is set to become the new /pol/ but sitewide.

    • Cataphract@lemmy.ml
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      3 hours ago

      Real “Old Man on the Porch” vibes coming from this one. I was around for the early internet, you’re completely losing touch with society and reality if you think it’s the same.

      Most people at that time didn’t get their news and gossip from a device in their hand. It was called a newspaper, education, or listening to your peers. Internet extremists were still considered fringe or whacko’s and you had to hunt them down to learn more, they weren’t blasted by an algorithm on a front loading page for you.

      People’s businesses and way of life weren’t determined by their access to internet and the corporations didn’t have such a stranglehold across the economical board when it came to online. The hero worship of those that control the companies wasn’t at such an all time high, but considered a weird cult.

      I’m not even going to go into the difference a child has on the internet today versus what a kid going through the 90’s was like, there’s just no comparison to what’s going on now. Yeah we had obscure boards, messengers, and silly videos on multiple sites…that’s seriously nothing compared to how mainstream everything has become.

  • Critical_Thinker@lemm.ee
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    7 hours ago

    I hate fuckerberg but there’s a possibility he’s playing 3d chess this time.

    The amount of backlash and outrage that letting all the bullshit through because politicians are spewing it and being cheered might cause the politicians doing it to have to change. Generally no one wants the new policy.

    They clamor for “free speech” but once they see how it devolves the public sentiment will say “OH GOD WE TAKE IT BACK”

    • dx1@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      That is an extremely remote, one might say infinitesimally small, possibility. Incredibly far more likely is that he’s plugged in politically and the ruling class wants to shift public debate even more fascist using automated control of public discourse.