Meta on Tuesday announced sweeping changes to how it moderates content that will roll out in the coming months, including doing away with professional fact checking. But the company also quietly updated its hateful conduct policy, adding new types of content users can post on the platform, effective immediately. <\/p>\n
Users are now allowed to, for example, refer to \u201cwomen as household objects or property\u201d or \u201ctransgender or non-binary people as \u2018it,\u2019\u201d according to a section of the policy prohibiting such speech that was crossed out. A new section of the policy notes Meta will allow \u201callegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality.\u201d <\/p>\n
Previously, such comments would have been subject to removal under the policy. The changes to Meta\u2019s hateful conduct policy were first reported by Wired. <\/p>\n
Meta had hinted in its announcement about its content moderation policy changes Tuesday morning that it would get rid of restrictions on certain topics, such as immigration and gender identity, and allow more political discussions. But the updated policy shows just how quickly Meta is moving to enact CEO Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s vision for \u201cfree expression.\u201d <\/p>\n
Meta on Tuesday also announced it would do away with its network of independent fact checkers in the United States and will instead rely on user-generated \u201ccommunity notes\u201d to add context to posts. It also said it would adjust its automated systems that scan for policy violations, which it says have resulted in \u201ctoo much content being censored that shouldn\u2019t have been.\u201d The systems will now be focused only on extreme violations such as child sexual exploitation and terrorism. <\/p>\n
Zuckerberg acknowledged that the new approach will mean \u201cthat we\u2019re going to catch less bad stuff, but we\u2019ll also reduce the number of innocent people\u2019s posts and accounts that we accidentally take down.\u201d <\/p>\n
A Meta spokesperson noted that the company will continue to prohibit attacks against certain groups, such as those based on ethnicity, race and religion, as well as prohibiting slurs, under the policy. And the spokesperson said that the company will continue enforce its policies against targeted bullying and harassment, as well as <\/strong>incitement of violence. <\/p>\n The company\u2019s Tuesday changes come as the company and its leader have sought to curry favor with Donald Trump and other Republicans ahead of the president-elect\u2019s second term, echoing in its announcement longstanding criticisms that Meta was \u201ccensoring\u201d conservative voices. <\/p>\n Trump welcomed the changes in a press conference Tuesday and said he thinks the changes are \u201cprobably\u201d due to threats he\u2019s made to Zuckerberg in the past. But some experts who study the online information ecosystem raised alarms that the changes could lead to more viral false claims and hate speech on Meta\u2019s platforms. <\/p>\n Among the other changes to Meta\u2019s hateful conduct policy, the company removed a prohibition against statements denying the existence of \u201cprotected\u201d groups, such as statements that a certain group of people doesn\u2019t or shouldn\u2019t exist. The policy also now allows for content arguing in favor of \u201cgender-based limitations of military, law enforcement, and teaching jobs.\u201d <\/p>\n The company also updated its \u201cmisinformation\u201d policy to note the dissolution of its US-based fact-checking network. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Meta on Tuesday announced sweeping changes to how it moderates content that will roll out in the coming months, including doing away with professional fact checking. But the company also quietly updated its hateful conduct policy, adding new types of content users can post on the platform, effective immediately. Users are now allowed to, for <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11730,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11729","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}