New content moderation policies governing hate speech on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads that were enacted by parent company Meta on Wednesday contain a carveout that allows users to call LGBTQ people mentally ill.
According to the guidelines, which otherwise prohibit use of such insults on the online platforms, “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.’”
Meta also removed rules that forbid insults about a person’s appearance based on race, ethnicity, national origin, disability, religious affiliation, caste, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity, and serious disease while withdrawing policies that prohibited expressions of hate against a person or a group on the basis of their protected class and references to transgender or nonbinary people as “it.”
In a video on Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s co-founder, chairman, and CEO, said the platforms’ “restrictions on topics like immigration and gender” were now “out of touch with mainstream discourse.”
“What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it’s gone too far,” he added.
In a statement to the Washington Blade, Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson said “Everyone should be able to engage and learn online without fear of being targeted or harassed. While we understand the difficulties in enforcing content moderation, we have grave concerns that the changes announced by Meta will put the LGBTQ+ community in danger both online and off.”
“What’s left of Meta’s hateful conduct policy expressly allows users to bully LGBTQ+ people based on their gender identity or sexual orientation and even permits calls for the exclusion of LGBTQ+ people from public spaces,” she said. “We can expect increased anti-LGBTQ+ harassment, further suppression of LGBTQ+ content, and drastic chilling effects on LGBTQ+ users’ expression.”
Robinson added, “While we recognize the immense harms and dangers of these new policies, we ALL have a role to play in lifting up our stories, pushing back on misinformation and hate, and supporting each other in online spaces. We need everyone engaged now more than ever. HRC isn’t going anywhere, and we will always be here for you.”
As attacks against LGBTQ and especially transgender Americans have ramped up over the past few years in legislative chambers and courtrooms throughout the country, bias-motivated crimes including acts of violence are also on the rise along with homophobic and transphobic hate speech, misinformation, and conspiracy theories that are spread farther and faster thanks to the massive reach of social media platforms and the policies and practices by which the companies moderate user content and design their algorithms.
However ascendant certain homophobic and transphobic ideas might be on social media and in the broader realm of “political and religious discourse,” homosexuality and gender variance are not considered mental illnesses in the mainstream study or clinical practice of psychiatry.
The American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its internationally recognized Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders more than 50 years ago and more than 30 years ago erased “transsexualism” to use “gender identity disorder” instead before switching to “gender dysphoria” in 2013. These changes were meant to clarify the distinction between the patient’s identity as trans and the ego-dystonic distress experienced in many cases when one’s birth sex differs from one’s gender identity.
Research has consistently shown the efficacy of treating gender dysphoria with gender-affirming health interventions — the psychiatric, medical, and surgical care that can bring patients’ brains and bodies into closer alignment with their self-concept while reducing the incidence of severe depression, anxiety, self-harm behavior, and suicide.
Just like slandering LGBTQ people as sick or sexually deviant, the pathologization of homosexuality and gender variance as disordered (or linked to different mental illnesses that are actually listed in the DSM) is not new, but rather a revival of a coarser homophobia and transphobia that until the recent past was largely relegated to a time well before queer people had secured any meaningful progress toward legal, social, and political equality.
Wednesday’s announcement by Meta marked just the latest move that seems meant to ingratiate the tech giant with President-elect Donald Trump and curry favor with his incoming administration, which in turn could smooth tensions with conservative lawmakers who have often been at odds with either Facebook, Instagram, and Zuckerberg — who had enjoyed a close relationship with the Obama White House and over the years has occasionally championed progressive policies like opposing mass deportations.
Public signs of reconciliation with Trump began this summer, when Meta removed restrictions on his Facebook and Instagram accounts that were enacted following the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
In the months since, the company has continued cozying up to Trump and Republican leaders in Washington, including with Tuesday’s announcement that Meta platforms will no longer use professional fact checking, among other policy changes that mirror those enacted by Elon Musk after he took over Twitter in 2022, changed its name to X, and created conditions that have allowed hate and misinformation to proliferate far more than ever before.
In recent months, Musk, the world’s richest man, has emerged as one of the president-elect’s fiercest allies, spending a reported $277 million to support his presidential campaign and using his platform and influence to champion many of the incoming administration’s policy priorities, including efforts to target the trans community.
Last month, Zuckerberg and Apple CEO Tim Cook each donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee, with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and OpenAI’s Sam Altman each reportedly pledging matching contributions.
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