Facebook lifts restrictions on calling women ‘property’ and transgender people ‘freaks’
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The social media giant Meta has loosened its public rules on hate speech as Mark Zuckerberg seeks to curry favour with Donald Trump. Facebook and Instagram have quietly loosened their public rules on hate speech against transgender people, women, and immigrants as executives seek to curry favor with Donald Trump.
![[A screenshot from Meta’s policy change log, showing adjustments as of Tuesday Jan 7, 2024. Green highlights are additions, red strikethroughs are deletions.]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/07/17/Screenshot-2025-01-07-at-5.26.04%E2%80%AFPM.jpg)
Gone is the clause saying you cannot compare women to "household objects or property." Also removed is a prohibition on claiming that there is "no such thing" as a trans or gay person. Previously you could not say that a protected group spreads or is responsible for Covid-19, but the new changes removed that line, which seems to allow for anti-Chinese rhetoric.
Added in to the policy are new clauses apparently designed to explicitly allow common anti-trans arguments, such as advocating for trans people to be banned from public bathrooms, school sports, or certain jobs. "We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation," reads one exception. The same section previously said that users couldn’t call protected groups “freaks” or “abnormal”.
The new policy is among a raft Republican-friendly reforms announced by Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday, alongside abolishing Meta's fact-checking program and moving its content moderation team from California to Texas. Meta also announced Monday that Ultimate Fighting Championship president and Trump ally Dana White will join its board of directors.
The document updated on Tuesday — Meta shows a log of the changes made to the policy — is only a public-facing summary of the actual rules enforced by the company’s content moderators, which are far more detailed and usually kept secret from users.
