Calling women ‘household items’ is now allowed on Facebook after Meta updated its guidelines

New York
CNN
—

Meta on Tuesday announced sweeping changes to how it moderates content that will roll out in the coming months, including the elimination of professional fact-checking. But the company also quietly updated its hateful behavior policy and added new types of content that users can post on the platform with immediate effect.

Users are now allowed to refer to, for example, “women as household objects or property” or “transgender or non-binary people as ‘it,'” according to a section of the policy to prohibit such speech that was crossed out. A new section of the policy notes Meta will allow “claims of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse on transgenderism and homosexuality.”

Previously, such comments would have been subject to removal under the policy. The changes to Meta’s hateful conduct policy were first reported by Wired.

Meta, in its announcement of changes to its content moderation policy on Tuesday morning, had indicated that it would get rid of restrictions on certain topics, such as immigration and gender identity, and allow more political discussion. But the updated policy shows how quickly Meta is moving to adopt CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for “free speech.”

Meta also announced on Tuesday that it would end its network of independent fact-checkers in the US and will instead rely on user-generated “community notes” 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 “too much content being censored that shouldn’t have been.” The systems will now only be focused on extreme violations such as child sexual exploitation and terrorism.

Zuckerberg acknowledged that the new approach will mean “we’re going to catch less bad stuff, but we’re also going to reduce the number of innocent people’s posts and accounts that we accidentally remove.”

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 defamation, under the policy. And the spokesperson said the company will continue to enforce its policies against targeted bullying and harassment, as well incitement to violence.

The company’s 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’s second term, repeating in its announcement longstanding criticism that Meta “censored” conservative voices.

Trump welcomed the changes at a press conference on Tuesday, saying he believes the changes are “probably” due to threats he has made against 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’s platforms.

Among the other changes to Meta’s hateful conduct policy, the company removed a ban on statements that denied the existence of “protected” groups, such as statements that a certain group of people does not exist or should not exist. The policy now also allows content that argues for “gender-based restrictions on military, law enforcement and teaching jobs.”

The company also updated its “misinformation” policy to note the dissolution of its US-based fact-checking network.