Meta is now granting its users new freedom to post a wide array of derogatory remarks about races, nationalities, ethnic groups, sexual orientations, and gender identities, training materials obtained by The Intercept reveal.
Examples of newly permissible speech on Facebook and Instagram highlighted in the training materials include:
“Immigrants are grubby, filthy pieces of shit.”
“Gays are freaks.”
“Look at that tranny (beneath photo of 17 year old girl).”
The changes are part of a broader policy shift that includes the suspension of the company’s fact-checking program. The goal, Meta said Tuesday, is to “allow more speech by lifting restrictions.”
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While Kaplan and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg have couched the changes as a way to allow users to engage more freely in ideological dissent and political debate, the previously unreported policy materials reviewed by The Intercept illustrate the extent to which purely insulting and dehumanizing rhetoric is now accepted.
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Kate Klonick, a content moderation policy expert who spoke to The Intercept, contests Meta’s framing that the new rules as less politicized, given the latitude they provide to attack conservative bogeymen.
“Drawing lines around content moderation was always a political enterprise,” said Klonick, an associate professor of law at St. John’s University and scholar of content moderation policy. “To pretend these new rules are any more ‘neutral’ than the old rules is a farce and a lie.”
She sees the shifts announced by Kaplan — a former White House deputy chief of staff under George W. Bush and Zuckerberg’s longtime liaison to the American right — as “the open political capture of Facebook, particularly because the changes are pandering to a particular party.”
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Another policy shift: “Referring to the target as genitalia or anus are now considered non-violating and are allowed.” As an example of what is now permissible, Facebook offers up: “Italians are dickheads.”
While many of the examples and underlying policies seem muddled, the document shows clarity around allowing disparaging remarks about transgender people, including children. Noting that “‘Tranny’ is no longer a designated slur and is now non-violating,” the materials provide three examples of speech that should no longer be removed: “Trannies are a problem,” “Look at that tranny (beneath photo of 17 year old girl),” and “Get these trannies out of my school (beneath photo of high school students).”
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According to Jillian York, director for international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Meta’s hate speech protections have historically been well-intentioned, however deeply flawed in practice. “While this has often resulted in over-moderation that I and many others have criticized, these examples demonstrate that Meta’s policy changes are political in nature and not intended to simply allow more freedom of expression,” York said.
Meta has faced international scrutiny for its approach to hate speech, most notably after role that hate speech and other dehumanizing language on Facebook played in fomenting genocide in Myanmar. Following criticism of its mishandling of Myanmar, where the United Nations found Facebook had played a “determining role” in the slaughter of over 650,000 Rohingya Muslims, the company spent years touting its investment in preventing the spread of similar rhetoric in the future.
“The reason many of these lines were drawn where they were is because hate speech often doesn’t stay speech, it turns into real world conduct,” said Klonick, the content moderation scholar.
I’m a bit sad that many people here on Lemmy who have a lot more freedom of speech think this decision is bad. Less moderation should be considered a good thing. The internet has always had the rule that everything on the internet is a lie. That’s how I grew up with it anyways. And how it should be.
The examples they gave are nothing more than examples. I don’t support those comments whatsoever, but in the context of allowing more free speech and using it as an example or as a guideline, I fully understand it. Moderators should be unbiased.
People don’t realize that these examples have been cherry picked for a narrative. The media wants money and politicians want power. It goes both ways. “Right wingers are a bunch of fascist shitheads” would also be allowed. But that does not really get a lot of sensation going now does it.
In Rwanda, the US pondered to interfere with the signal of the Hutu radio channel that repeatedly refer to Tutsis as cockroaches and promote hating them. While it is not what caused the 100 days of genocide, it is a contributing factor. The autumn 2024 riots in UK relating to immigration started with a deliberate fake news.
I also grew being told not to believe everything on TV, reading materials, radio and now Internet. But it is self-absorbed to assume that others would have been taught the same. “Not everyone thinks like me” is a hard lesson I learned in life. Not everyone would have been taught about critical thinking, nor consume the same information as you and I do. We live in our own bubble with our own set of realities without realising it.
I used to be for absolute free speech, but looking at the historical experience of Europe and Rwanda, I can see why the need for regulation on free speech. The United States is absolutist on free speech, but I think it is because they have not yet experienced atrocities that is fueled by incitement to hatred. I applaud the US in having to maintain a balance since many Americans still counter hateful movements. But from the look of things, the US could be heading on a trajectory that there could be point of no return.
Practically speaking, I’m on the fence, and ultimately I believe the debate on free speech would never be settled. Someone told me the principle of social contract could be applied; that society could decide what is acceptable. However, what is acceptable to some may not be to others. And overall society is not always the good judge of many things.
Americans tend to misunderstand what our version of “free speech” actually means and how it came to be part of our Bill of Rights. People see it as an excuse or opportunity to say whatever they want, but it was created specifically because people in Europe were often imprisoned for speaking out against a king. So it really only applies to the government. You can’t be imprisoned for speaking out against the government unless you are actively threatening imminent harm against specific government officials or spaces. People forget that there are real-world implications to their speech from groups that are not connected to the government. That said, I do see the erosion and dilution of these rights happening through the control of government enterprises and corporate decision-making.
I would also like to believe that unrestricted free speech is great no matter where or how it occurs and no matter who it is directed at. But, as you’ve said, and as I’ve experienced in my lifetime, completely unregulated speech often ends in a lot of undeserved hate toward “unwanted” groups with a lack of thoughtful discussion. I’m still not sure if this is because some groups end up being “louder” in terms of their reach, whether it’s through censorship, popularity, or monetary worth, or if people actually agree at the core of their selves. Either way, hate is a form of control. How dare you be different than the rest of the accepted group?
Truly free speech can only work in a place where the populace is fully educated to the best of their ability and are knowledgable enough to be able to appreciate the struggles of people who come from different circumstances. This is along with the understanding of objective research and its importance. So, I struggle with the concept also. I’m big on the idea that no one should be restricted from access to knowledge and learning, so it’s difficult to simultaneously agree with a lack of acceptance for full expression of the truth as you see it.
Fully free speech can only occur successfully in a place where everyone has equivalent access to opportunities for growth, education, and financial success. In an educated society, free speech should not need indoctrination, control, lies, or exploitation of any group to have an effective discourse. But, I doubt personal self-interest would allow the rise of ideals like this to occur in actuality. There’s always someone who is constantly looking out for what they can gain, control, and manipulate in order to amass as much power as possible. Power is a heady drug, and some people are more susceptible to its charms than others.
So I, too, am on the fence about this issue. I don’t know that we will ever be able to come to a consensus on how to manage it since it is incredibly difficult to weed out the self-interested players. Our solutions thus far have been too simplistic for such a nuanced issue. Atrocities or no atrocities, American concepts of free speech are based in situational history, and due to the understandable skepticism of the colonials, it is metaphorically written in stone in our country. As such, it is both amazing for giving us the ability to condemn and chastise governmental decisions and changes directly and without fear, but it is also terrible because it allows people to use this loophole to exploit their fellow man (i.e. creating said atrocities for money and hiding it under the guise of freedom). Unless the speech meets a very strict and difficult-to-reach specificity or you have little to no money, you basically can get away with whatever.
Society is often caught up in the whirlwind of others’ opinions, and those opinions come from a place with an obvious connection to personal self-interest, so I agree that it should not be the determining factor in this discussion. Inherently, society is going to pick whatever benefits are presented to them directly in the short term, especially if everyone involved is on board. What is good for all doesn’t matter at that point. I appreciate that some still believe in our concept of free speech, but in reality, we’re not reaching the goal that others may think we are. We continue to have the same struggles as we slog through figuring out what free speech truly means in practice.
Please don’t give too much credit to our concept of free speech. Is a beautiful idea that covers up exactly what you forecasted: we are headed down the very road we feared. Hopefully, our constitution can withstand the onslaught, but I don’t have a lot of hope left anymore in our ability to do what’s best for ourselves nationally, locally, or personally. I hope that someday we reach the ideal, but as you said, I’m not sure if it’ll ever be settled.