Facebook ‘allows people to call LGBTQ+ people weird, mentally ill freaks’
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Meta has come under fire from LGBTQ+ groups for quietly dropping some of its hate speech rules that protect queer users. The tech giant, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, took a pen to its rules on hate speech, now called ‘hateful conduct’, on Tuesday.
![[(Picture: Meta)]](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/SEI_235458336-bac2.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=646)
The move comes after the company announced it was scrapping its longstanding fact-checking program, instead asking users to correct inaccurate and false content. But queer rights groups told Metro the changes will allow LGBTQ+ people to be targeted by agitators in ways that other marginal groups are protected.
![[(Picture: Meta)]](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/SEI_235458496-5cce.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=646)
The revised policy says Meta will now ‘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”‘.
![[Mandatory Credit: Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock (14613460e) Meta logo displayed on a laptop screen and Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger icons displayed on a phone screen are seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on July 31, 2024. Meta Platforms Photo Illustrations, Krakow, Poland - 31 Jul 2024]](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/SEI_232863611-b12d.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=646)
A clause, which said users cannot refer to LGBTQ+ people as ‘freaks’ has been removed, the policy’s change log shows, while others against referring to trans and non-binary people as ‘it’ and saying trans people ‘do not exist’ have also been deleted.
![[FILE - Attendees visit the Meta booth at the Game Developers Conference 2023 in San Francisco on March 22, 2023. Facebook parent Meta Platforms deliberately engineered its social platforms to hook kids and knew ??? but never disclosed ??? that it had received millions of complaints about underage users on Instagram but only disabled a fraction of those accounts, according to a newly unsealed legal complaint described in reports from the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)]](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/SEI_181742513-de5f.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=646)
‘We do allow content arguing for gender-based limitations of military law enforcement and teaching jobs,’ the revised policy adds. ‘We also allow the same content based on sexual orientation, when the content is based on religious belief.’. The new policy ‘allows room’ for people to call for gay and trans people to be excluded from specific places, it says.
‘People 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,’ it states.
