Hateful Conduct policies are supposed to make social media safer, but Meta’s new one does the opposite. Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is taking Facebook and Instagram in a new direction. The updated policy has relaxed or outright removed restrictions on some kinds of speech. That includes unfounded, anti-scientific language about trans people. With the tumult at X, the rise of bot accounts and AI posts, and rising trends of bigotry, social media was already a minefield. Under Meta’s new Hateful Conduct policy, it looks like it will be more explosive than ever. Here’s what you need to know.
Zuckerberg’s Dangerous New Direction for Meta
While the Hateful Conduct section is perilously vague in some areas, it spells out its position on LGBTQ identities explicitly. In doing so, it creates a weird loophole for attacks against women and minorities. Here’s what Meta’s updated policy says:
We do allow 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.”
Neither transgender nor homosexuality are mental illnesses or abnormalities. That’s not a matter of debate, even if all you care about is the science side of things. The definitive guidebooks for diagnostic criteria are the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Both are the product of extensive research and the collective expertise of some of the greatest minds of modern science and medicine. Neither classifies people as ill or abnormal for being trans or queer.
Meta’s apparent position is that spreading non-scientific, bigoted, and inflammatory information about trans people is acceptable. It’s hard to square that circle given the Hateful Conduct’s policy against slurs and other types of hate speech. This hands-off, “let them fight it out” approach to social media feels painfully reminiscent of Twitter after its transformation into X under Elon Musk. The rancid and hate-filled discourse that inevitably plagues unmoderated social media can only get worse in this kind of environment. As long as tech billionaires and conglomerates care more about account activity than public safety and moral decency, however, we’re not likely to see a change.
