I’m writing this blogpost mostly to have one link to point people to, to inform you about the recent changes at Meta / Facebook / Instagram / Threads that respond to the Trump reelection in 2024.
Warning
This post contains discussion and a lot of mentions of: transphobia, sexism, racism, ableism, antisemitism, islamophobia, anti-immigrant rhetoric, harrassment & abuse, and probably similar. As well as uspol, and eupol.
Meta has recently announced1 changes to their policies regarding moderation and fact-checking.
TLDR
This whole blogpost is a TLDR already, but here is a TLDR of the TLDR I guess:
- Meta is discontinuing their fact-checking programme in the US
- They now allow a lot of harrassment under new rules, specifically a lot of transphobia
- Mark Zuckerberg is trying to please Trump
- Leaked internal presentations show how this is somehow even worse than you would imagine
Fact-checking
The fact-checking prograamme in the US will now be discontinued, and replaced with a community notes feature.1
Anti-harrassment policy changes
The changes to the policy relaxed the rules around harrassment of members of oppressed groups, and provided examples of what is now allowed2. The specific changes are2:
Quote
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.”
We do allow content arguing for gender-based limitations of military, law enforcement, and teaching jobs. We also allow the same content based on sexual orientation, when the content is based on religious beliefs.
They added more exceptions to when gender-based discrimination is allowed (new additions marked in bold)2:
Quote
People sometimes use sex- or gender-exclusive language when discussing access to spaces often limited by sex or gender, such as access to bathrooms, specific schools, specific military, law enforcement, or teaching roles, and health or support groups. Other times, they call for exclusion or use insulting language in the context of discussing political or religious topics, such as when discussing transgender rights, immigration, or homosexuality. Finally, sometimes people curse at a gender in the context of a romantic break-up. Our policies are designed to allow room for these types of speech.
Quote
…except for sex or gender-based exclusion from spaces commonly limited by sex or gender, such as restrooms, sports and sports leagues, health and support groups, and specific schools
They also removed a section:
Quote
Another section that specifically banned making dehumanizing references to transgender or non-binary people as “it” or referring to women “as household objects or property or objects in general” has been removed entirely.
~ from The Verge 2
and a bunch of more things, you should read the full article (2).
Mark Zuckerberg’s overview of the changes
You should also watch this entire video from Meta’s public announcement1:
the TLDR is:
- Announcement of the changes described in this blogpost
- He’s happy to work with Trump to “push back against governments around the world […] pushing to censor more. […] Europe has an ever increasing number of laws institunalising censorship. […]”
- They are moving some department from California to Texas (yes, that’s it, you can clearly see this is just trying to pander to certain people)
- ~“Trump is so nice uwu”
- ~“Freedom of speech hurr durr”
The one I would like you to pay attention to specifically is the one about the EU. EU’s GDPR is a big pain for Meta because they can’t abuse your privacy as easily anymore, so obviously they want to spin it as “censorship”. Similarly, with EU’s DMA, they have been forced to stop some of their monopolistic policies, for example they now offer a way to have Facebook Messenger without Facebook. I would like them to, kindly, fuck off from EU’s politics. But that’s a side-note, this blogpost is mostly about the *phobic changes in their policies.
Leaks showing how the policy changes are even more fucked up
In leaked internal training presentations, Meta has outlined examples of what is now allowed on the platform3.
Quote
- ”Gay people are sinners"
- "Trans people are immoral"
- "Trans people are mentally ill"
- "Immigrants are grubby, filthy pieces of shit"
- "Gays are freaks"
- "Look at that tranny” (beneath photo of 17 year old girl, edit: this has been later commented to be a mistake but would be fine if they were 18+ apparently)
- “Migrants are no better than vomit"
- "These damn immigrants can’t be trusted, they’re all criminals"
- "I bet Jorge’s the one who stole my backpack after track practice today. Immigrants are all thieves"
- "Japanese are all Yakuza”
~ from The Intercept 3
The article (3) has more examples, and again, you should read the whole thing.
Other small stuff
- They changed names of their trans color schemes to “candy floss” (trans flag) and “golden sunset” (nonbinary flag) to distance themselves from pride4.
- They blocked links to Pixelfed (a federated alternative to Instagram part of Fedi)5.
- 404media.co/facebook-is-censoring-404-media-stories-about-facebooks-censorship
- 404media.co/instagram-ads-send-this-nudify-site-90-percent-of-its-traffic
- distrowatch.com/weekly-mobile.php?issue=20250127
Info
You should read all the linked articles123 in full, this blogpost is just a summary.
Info
I’ll likely be updating this article in the future.
Footnotes
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https://about.fb.com/news/2025/01/meta-more-speech-fewer-mistakes/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4
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https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/7/24338471/meta-hate-speech-hateful-conduct-policy-moderation ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6
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https://theintercept.com/2025/01/09/facebook-instagram-meta-hate-speech-content-moderation/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4
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https://www.404media.co/meta-deletes-trans-and-nonbinary-messenger-themes/ ↩
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https://cointelegraph.com/news/meta-free-speech-blocks-decentralized-competitor ↩