Meta's new hate speech guidelines permit users to say LGBTQ people are mentally ill

Meta will allow its billions of social media users to accuse people of being mentally ill based on their sexuality or gender identity, among broader changes it made to its moderation policies and practices Tuesday.

The company’s new guidelines prohibit insults about someone’s intellect or mental illness on Facebook, Instagram and Threads, as have previous iterations. However, the latest guidelines now include a caveat for accusing LGBTQ people of being mentally ill because they are gay or transgender. 

“We do 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,’” the revised company guidelines read.

The new guidelines around hate speech are part of Meta’s broader major changes regarding how it moderates online speech on its platforms. On Tuesday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said it will replace its fact-checking program, which has relied on trusted organizational partners, with a community-driven system similar to X’s Community Notes. X’s system allows users to submit suggested “notes” on other people’s content, and then certain users vote on whether or not the notes are publicly displayed. Zuckerberg cited “recent elections” and “a cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritizing speech.”

The long list of changes to the new hate speech guidelines include removing rules that forbid insults about a person’s appearance based on race, ethnicity, national origin, disability, religious affiliation, caste, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity and serious disease. Meta also scrapped policies that prohibited expressions of hate against a person or a group on the basis of their protected class and that banned users from referring to transgender or nonbinary people as “it.”

GLAAD, an LGBTQ media advocacy group, denounced the changes.

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“Without these necessary hate speech and other policies, Meta is giving the green light for people to target LGBTQ people, women, immigrants, and other marginalized groups with violence, vitriol, and dehumanizing narratives,” President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement. “With these changes, Meta is continuing to normalize anti-LGBTQ hatred for profit — at the expense of its users and true freedom of expression. Fact-checking and hate speech policies protect free speech.”

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A spokesperson for Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

CEOs and business leaders in tech and beyond are broadening their efforts to woo President-elect Donald Trump. Meta is among the several tech companies and executives — including Amazon, Apple CEO Tim Cook and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman — that donated $1 million to Trump’s second inaugural fund within the last several weeks. Meta also announced Tuesday that UFC’s Dana White, a longtime Trump supporter, would join its board.