Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Threads and Instagram, rolled out major changes to its hateful conduct policy this week appearing to declare that its now okay to call LGBTIQA+ people mentally ill on their platforms.
Founder Mark Zuckerberg announced the company would be ending its US based third party fact checking program opting instead for a community driven notes feature similar to the one used by rival social media platform X.
They also announced they’d be lifted restrictions a round political discourse, and allowing LGBTIQA+ people to be referred to be derogatory terms, and described as having a mental illness.
In a statement Joel Kaplan, Chief Global Affairs Officer for META said the platform wanted to embrace free speech and it was inevitable that things might get “messy”.
“Meta’s platforms are built to be places where people can express themselves freely. That can be messy. On platforms where billions of people can have a voice, all the good, bad and ugly is on display. But that’s free expression.” Kaplan said.
“We’re getting rid of a number of restrictions on topics like immigration, gender identity and gender that are the subject of frequent 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.”
Kaplan argues that by freeing up resources from monitoring speech, the META team will be able to dedicate more time to more serious issues  terrorism, child sexual exploitation, drugs, fraud and scams.
The changes announced are for the USA, and the company has not given clear answers on how they will affect the platform globally where it may have to contend with different countries varying laws.
A spokesperson for federal Minister for Communications Michelle Rowland said social media companies like Meta were expected to comply with Australian law and all people were entitled to respect, equality and freedom from harm online.
“The Criminal Code Amendment (Hate Crimes) Bill 2024 will criminalise the most serious kinds of hateful communication, including online, being those that create real risks of force or violence against groups and individuals,” the spokesperson said when asked by the ABC.
The company’s new approach comes days after they finally admitted that they’d accidently been restricting LGBTIQA+ related content on Facebook, describing the deletion of posts and entire community groups as a “technical error”.
