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.

      • LandedGentry@lemmy.zip
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        1 day ago

        Data collection and why on earth should we trust them after all we’ve seen?

        It’s painless to swap. Signal takes seconds to setup and can comb through your contacts just as easily while being infinitely more secure and trustworthy. It’s not like leaving one major social media platform for another and having to deal with the friction of swapping.

    • SushiRain@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I’m with you on Signal. Problem is most of WhatsApp users see Telegram, not Signal, as an alternative because it had more coverage over time, while Signal had zero.

    • orgrinrt@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Yup! When I announced I’d leave WhatsApp back in the day, even my (old) parents and some (even older) relatives proceeded to download signal just to stay in touch with me.

      Sure, I miss some news or announcements that they share in the big WhatsApp groups, but mostly I’m as up to date as everyone.

      Most of my friends did the same, but I noticed my age group (and younger) seem more adaptable here and very quickly figured everything out, and we got some groups entirely moved there. I suppose they feel okay having multiple apps for one thing, as opposed to the older gens, who struggle to learn one thing properly and try their best to just stick with it until eternity.

      Haven’t missed WhatsApp a bit, it was the least impactful of all of the meta suite (and others) I left behind back in 2017(?) or so.