Meta is now Giving its users new freedom to post a range of derogatory comments about races, nationalities, ethnic groups, sexual orientations and gender identities, training materials obtained by The Intercept reveal.
Examples of the new allowed speech on Facebook and Instagram highlighted in the training materials include:
“Immigrants are filthy, filthy pieces of shit.”
“Gays are weird.”
“Look at that trann (under the 17-year-old girl’s photo).”
The changes are part of a broader policy change that includes suspending the company’s fact-checking program. The goal, Meta said Tuesday, is to “allow more speech while removing restrictions.”
Meta’s newly appointed head of global policy, Joel Kaplan, described the effort in a statement as a means to fix “the complex systems to manage content on our platforms, which are increasingly complicated for us to implement “.
While Kaplan and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg have pitched the changes as a way to allow users to more freely engage in ideological dissent and political debate, previously reported policy materials reviewed by The Intercept illustrate the extent to which simply insulting and inhumane rhetoric is now accepted. .
The document provides those working on Meta user content with an overview of the hate speech policy changes, instructing them on how to implement the new rules. The most important changes are accompanied by a selection of “relevant examples” – hypothetical posts marked either “Allow” or “Remove”.
When asked about the new policy changes, Meta spokesperson Corey Chambliss referred The Intercept to comments from Kaplan’s blog post announcing the change: “We’re getting rid of a number of restrictions on topics like immigration, gender identity and gender that are the subject of frequent political discussions and debates. It’s not right that things can be said on TV or on the floor of Congress, but not on our platforms.”
Kate Klonick, an expert on content moderation policies who spoke to The Intercept, disputes Meta’s framing that the new rules are less politicized, given the latitude they provide to attack conservative trolls.
“Treating the lines around content moderation was always a political enterprise,” said Klonick, an associate professor of law at St. Louis University. John and content moderation policy researcher. “To claim that these new rules are more ‘neutral’ than the old rules is a farce and a lie.”
She sees the changes announced by Kaplan — a former White House deputy chief of staff under George W. Bush and Zuckerberg’s long association with the American right — as “an overt political capture of Facebook, especially because the changes are affecting a certain party. “
The public community of Meta The standards page says that even under the new relaxed rules, the company still protects “refugees, migrants, immigrants and asylum seekers from the most serious attacks” and prohibits “direct attacks” against people based on “race, ethnicity, national origin “. , disability, religion, caste, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity and serious illness.” But the instructive examples provided in the internal materials show a wide variety of comments that denigrate people based on these traits that are marked “Allow”.
Sometimes, the examples given seem confusing or contradictory. One site notes “generalizations” about any group remain banned if they draw a comparison to animals or pathogens — such as “All Syrian refugees are rodents.” But comparisons to “filth or feces” have now been downgraded from hate speech to a less serious form of “insult,” which only violates company rules if it’s directed at a protected group. According to examples provided by Meta, this change now allows users to broadly dehumanize immigrants with statements such as “Immigrants are filthy, filthy pieces of shit,” despite language elsewhere in the document claiming that “comparisons to subhumanity” remain prohibited.
The company’s policy around nausea-based hate walks a particularly fine line: “Immigrants are no better than vomit” is allowed, according to the materials, while “Muslims make me want to bleed” must be removed because it claims a group “causes disease.”
While general animal comparisons are still against the rules, many other types of broad stereotyping and hate are now allowed. “ALL statements of conduct (qualified and unqualified)” are also no longer against Meta’s rules, the document says, allowing sweeping generalizations linking entire races or ethnic groups to criminality or terrorism. The document offers as examples of acceptable racial generalizations: “These damn immigrants can’t be trusted, they’re all criminals,” “I bet Jorge is the one who stole my backpack after track practice today. Immigrants are all thieves” and “Japanese are all Yakuza.” He notes, however, that the statement “Negroes are all drug dealers” remains prohibited under the new rules.
Other sections of the material give examples of “prohibited slurs about sexual immorality”, such as “Jewish women are separated”. But the document also provides numerous examples of newly permitted slurs aimed at specific gender identities or sexual orientations, including “Gays are sinners” and “Trans people are immoral”. A post saying “Lesbians are so stupid” would remain banned as a “mental slur”, although “Trans people are mentally ill” is marked as allowed.
Generalizations about superiority and inferiority are similarly tricky, although attacks on immigrants tend to get a pass. Examples of prohibited content include: “Christian men are completely useless,” “Is it me? Or are all autistic women ugly?” and “Hispanics are as dirty as the ground we walk on.” Meanwhile, “Mexican immigrants are trash!” is now considered acceptable.
In general, restrictions on claims of ethnic or religious supremacy have been significantly eased. The document explains that Meta now allows “statements of superiority as long as the statements do not refer to the inferiority of the other. [protected characteristic] group (a) on the basis of natural intellectual ability and (b) without support.” Permissible statements under this rule include “Latinos are the best!” and “Black people are superior to everyone else.” Also now acceptable are comparative claims such as “Blacks are more violent than whites,” “Mexicans are lazier than Asians,” and “Jews are greedier than Christians.” Out of bounds, only because it has to do with intellectual ability, is the “White people are more intelligent than black people” example.
But general statements about intellect seem to be allowed if they are separated by putative evidence. For example, “I just read a statistical study that Jews are smarter than Christians. As far as I can tell, it’s true!” It is unclear whether one would be required to link to such a study, or simply claim its existence.
The rules around explicit hate speech have also been loosened considerably. “Statements of disdain, dislike, and dismissal, such as ‘I hate,’ ‘I don’t care,’ and ‘I don’t like’ are now considered inviolable and allowed,” the document explains. Included as acceptable examples are posts that say ” I don’t care about white people’ and ‘I’m a proud racist’.
The new rules also prohibit “targeting profanity” at a protected group, which “includes the use of the word ‘heaven’ and its variants”. Cited as an example, a post saying “Ugh, the dirty Jews are at it again” violates the rules simply because it contains an obscenity (the new rules allow the use of “whore” or dirty mother”).
“Referring to the target as genitalia or anus is now considered non-offensive and allowed.”
Another policy change: “Referring to the target as genitalia or anus is now considered non-offensive and is allowed.” As an example of what is now permissible, Facebook offers: “Italians are frivolous.”
While many of the examples and underlying policies seem confusing, the document provides clarity about allowing derogatory comments about transgender people, including children. Noting that “‘Tranny’ is no longer a designated slur and is now outlawed,” the materials provide three examples of the word that should no longer be removed: “Trannies are a problem,” “Look at that tranny (below photo and 17-year-old girl)” and “Get these trannn out of my school (below the photo of high school students)”
After this article was published, Meta spokesman Andy Stone told The Intercept that the company had made an error in one of the examples in its briefing material. Stone said the Meta was meant to illustrate content that wouldn’t be allowed when it included the example “Look at that tranny (under the 17-year-old girl’s photo).
According to Jillian York, director of 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 the over-moderation that I and many others have criticized, these examples show that Meta’s policy changes are political in nature and not simply intended to allow more freedom of expression,” York said.
Meta has faced international scrutiny for its approach to hate speech, particularly after the role that hate speech and other dehumanizing language on Facebook played in fueling the genocide in Myanmar. Following criticism over its handling of Myanmar, where the United Nations found Facebook had played a “determining role” in the massacre of more than 650,000 Rohingya Muslims, the company spent years touting its investment in preventing similar rhetoric from spreading in the future.
“The reason a lot of these lines were drawn where they were is because hate speech often doesn’t stay words, it turns into real-world behavior,” said Klonick, the content moderation researcher.
It’s a premise that Meta pretended to share until this week. “We have a responsibility to fight abuse on Facebook. This is especially true in countries like Myanmar, where many people are using the internet for the first time and social media can be used to spread hate and fuel tension on the ground,” the company’s product manager Sara Su wrote in a post. blog in 2018. “While we’re adapting our approach to fake news in light of changing circumstances, our rules on hate speech have remained the same: it’s not allowed.”
Update: January 9, 2025, 9:11 pm ET
This article has been updated to include comment from Meta spokesperson Andy Stone, noting that an error in the company’s internal materials misclassified a post about trans youth as permissible.
