3w ago

Meta now lets users say gay and trans people have ‘mental illness’

www.wired.com Meta Now Lets Users Say Gay and Trans People Have ‘Mental Illness’

Meta rolled out a number of changes to its “Hateful Conduct” policy Tuesday as part of a sweeping overhaul of its approach toward content moderation.

Meta announced a series of major updates to its content moderation policies today, including ending its fact-checking partnerships and “getting rid” of restrictions on speech about “topics like immigration, gender identity and gender” that the company describes as frequent subjects of political discourse and debate. “It’s not right that things can be said on TV or the floor of Congress, but not on our platforms,” Meta’s newly appointed chief global affairs officer, Joel Kaplan, wrote in a blog post outlining the changes.
In an accompanying video, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg described the company’s current rules in these areas as “just out of touch with mainstream discourse.”
In tandem with this announcement, the company made a number of updates across its Community Guidelines, an extensive set of rules that outline what kinds of content are prohibited on Meta’s platforms, including Instagram, Threads, and Facebook. Some of the most striking changes were made to Meta’s “Hateful Conduct” policy, which covers discussions on immigration and gender.
In a notable shift, the company now says it allows “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.’”
In other words, Meta now appears to permit users to accuse transgender or gay people of being mentally ill because of their gender expression and sexual orientation. The company did not respond to requests for clarification on the policy.

126 comments

I'm trans. I do have mental illness. It's because society keeps sending me signals that I shouldn't exist.
- For what it's worth, I am hereby sending you the official signal that you should absolutely exist, that you have every right to be yourself, and that your continued existence is important and meaningful for yourself and others in similar situations especially. I hope you will forever be gifted with the courage to be yourself, even when the world is challenging you on it.
- It's the village, not the individuals. Our society is fucking sick. I'm straight, but it (the intolerance and violence towards people who are different) makes me sick.
  
  This person gets it.
  Thank you.
- You listen to society? They're the ones that invented gender characteristics and stereotypes. If you listen to them there's a chance you'll get caught up in their bullshit instead of just being what you'd be if there was no other human on earth.
  
  Kind of hard not to listen to society when you're a part of it. It's like saying to try to not listen to the music while you're at a nightclub.
- It's our current iteration of society that shouldn't exist.
- Is gender dysphoria not considered a health issue?? Legit asking. Like I thought the whole point of transitioning is that that is the treatment for it. That's not a BAD thing, but it is A thing. Calling gay people mentally ill is obviously non sense. Calling ALL trans people mentally ill I don't think is accurate... if they've actually transitioned lmao. Then they're not sick anymore ?? Plz let me know if that take is incorrect. Feel like having pre-transition gender dysphoria compared to other mental illnesses like anxiety/depression/etc is a positive thing because it normalizes it to a degree.
  Big difference between them being... there IS actually a cure to gender dysphoria compared to many other mental illnesses that can only be treated. Arguing with a right winger about this shit, he said he felt bad for trans people and that they were mentally ill. My response was "yeah no shit, you realize the way to reduce their risk of suicide is by letting them get the care they and their doctors deem necessary. It's straight cruelty to acknowledge that it is something they need help with yet demonizing them for seeking help."
  Guess the people saying shit like the headline aren't doing so with nuance in mind, and for them anyone trans at all = weird/mentally ill/sick.
  
  The whole thing with trans health is that being trans is not considered a mental illness but gender dysphoria still has a diagnostic rubric and has health problems associated. So saying trans people who have transitioned aren't sick anymore isn't quite accurate because they were never considered sick in the first place. One of the ideas behind this way of thinking is a trans person's issues aren't caused because they are trans, it's caused largely due to the lack of acceptance and support in the society around trans people. Framing transness as a mental illness also ignores the flipside of dysphoria - gender euphoria which is a very specific joy experienced by trans people expressing themselves healthily, it's not simply from lessening pain around dysphoria, it's basically something mostly unique to the trans experience that is overwhelmingly positive.
  Also there's not a one size fits all response to dysphoria. Some chose to physically transition and others choose to use other management techniques to help. There isn't a "cure" to gender dysphoria. There are limits to what can be achieved through physical transition even if one goes all the way. One can have dysphoria around stuff like not having periods and child bearing capabilities even if they are fully transitioned or there are things that are irreversible if the transition happens too late. Being trans can be a kind of complicated state of being where one needs to learn and implement how best to be supported. Framing it not as an illness removes the stigma of looking at the experience entirely clinically as something to be solved. The fix isn't to be "less trans" as it is when one approaches something as a disorder to be removed and minimized.
  
  You pretty much have it right. Many-to-most trans people will suffer from or experience gender dysphoria to varying degrees, which is treated with hormone replacement therapy, transitioning, surgery, talk therapy, etc.. Once trans people are at a state where they feel comfortable with their bodies (or achieve a congruence between their inner and outer selves), then gender dysphoria is technically no longer present, but may return if the body or the mind changes and are no longer congruent.
  Medically, this means that trans people can have an official diagnosis of gender dysphoria and get treatment for it. Gender dysphoria then goes away (hopefully) and preventative treatment like HRT continues.
  Trans people can obviously also have mental disorders unrelated to being trans.
  
  My thoughts exactly. As an outsider looking in, how would you classify gender dysphoria other than an illness?
  It's treatable, just not the way religious fanatics want to.
  
  What trump wants to do to trans people is the equivalent of lobotomizing everyone with bipolar disorder because you don’t believe the accepted treatments work.
  Gender dyspohoria is a mental health condition the same way ADHD is. Do you run around calling people with ADHD mentally ill? No. And, gender dysphoria is one of the easiest neurodivergent conditions to treat. You let the person be the gender they already know they are. Doing anything else may as well be lobotomizing them. It’s unacceptable and creates more problems. Plus it’s fucking cruel.

Reminder to get off Facebook and Instagram
This isn't the first time they've pulled stuff like this nor will it be the last
- Meta went all in on the VR Metaverse to woo the next generation and just shot themselves in the foot.
  
  VR Metaverse would have worked if they let people have legs.
  Meta would not have liked WHY it would have worked, however....
- Businesses need to bring back email newsletters. And whatever celebrities or whatnot you care about need to too. The only reason I signed back up for either of those sites was to follow a local business for updates/sales/etc.
- Reminder to get off Facebook and Instagram
  Most of us are already out or lurking because of family or some specific group they can't do without.
  The trick will be getting those people off the platform so we can cut all cords.
  
  Excuses...
- Facebook has about 3 billion users across the globe. That's just 500 million short of half the human population of the planet. At its height Twitter was around 360 million. And it's user base has only shrunk by 30 million or so since the douche bag took it over.
  Facebook, on the other hand, has dug its hooks into everyone's personal lives to a point at which getting them to ditch Facebook would be like telling everyone to basically ditch their friends and family. No one is going to do that.
  Twitter was an add-on. It was an extra. You could use it or not, nobody cared. It hadn't built a large enough user base to be so integral to people's social lives. TikTok, in about half the time twitter has existed, has basically eclipsed it in terms of monthly active users.
  We have to accept this fact, Facebook has become an institution. And it should scare literally everyone that such a huge and powerful platform is owned by one single person with no real oversight whatsoever. That is why he was able to unilaterally decide to first censor Facebook at the beginning of the election and now uncensor it once an oligarch friendly president has been elected.
  Everyone's so focused on DElon Husk's role in getting Trump elected, but all Zuckerberg needed to do was shut down the discourse on his platform so that the news couldn't flow. And now he's adopting the policies of Xwitter in an effort to win some favoritism from the incoming administration.

Religion is a mental illness.
- Preach! But you know, not really.
- Trans activism sometimes sounds like what religion sounded like in the early 80s. Lots of liturgy, false dichotomies and declaring some people irredeemably evil, and the belief in a soul.

Let’s be honest, they already allow rampant, dangerous misinformation, bullying, and hate speech. They’re just being a little more honest about it, now.
- The mask has slipped because they know they can get away with it.
  After all,this isn't anything forced on Meta, they are taking advantage of the incoming president being all for this and binning policies they clearly only follower reluctantly (and poorly).
  
  I don't think it's a mask, I think they're signaling and competing for favor. The timing is obvious.
- Don't forget that they will actively defend hate speech and overly police the opposite because their moderators aren't moderated. They have literal priests dictating what is considered misoginy and homophobia ffs (True story).

Fucking insanity, right wing popularism here we come.
- U.S. Defamation law:
  To prove prima facie defamation, a plaintiff must show four things: 1) a false statement purporting to be fact; 2) publication or communication of that statement to a third person; 3) fault amounting to at least negligence; and 4) damages, or some harm caused to the reputation of the person or entity who is the subject of the statement.
  false statement. ✔️
  publication ✔️
  negligence proven by not understanding why it was banned from communications just recently on their platform ✔️
  harm to the reputation of a person. (If 1 person believes or republished that information they have fulfilled 4 categories.)
  I'd say your freedom of speech does not cover that at all because there was intent to harm others.

- Guillotine Luigi.
  What did Mario bros do to deserve such fate

The whole of American society is slowly shifting towards widespread acceptance of violence against queer people. Any notion that our society or culture has progressed in any way is fake. It's empty. The post Stonewall era of perceived progress is over. For many queer people, the approach of January 20th is a shadow encroaching on the light of lives we hoped to live. Fear is becoming very commonplace in our communities. There's no mistaking what the people in power plan to do to us. And every day, widespread society shows more and more that that's fine. Any debate that we deserve rights is over. We are a problem for those in power to choose how to get rid of. Our lives are completely at the whims of the state, a state now being handed over to a group of people who delight in our suffering. Who delight in the suffering of children.
I fully expect states like Florida to criminalize being queer as soon as Trump takes office. They will start to raid night clubs and arrest trans people under crossdressing laws and gay people under sodomy laws. Just like they did in the 60s. We will be forced into hiding. We will grow up never understanding who we are or that its okay for people like us to exist. A whole generation of queer children will die because of laws like this. Nothing has changed.
- Shoot 'em. The cops, I mean.
- I wish, oh how I wish I could say you were lying or fear mongering.
  The Democrats claiming they lost because they were "Too woke" and "Transpepole are to blame!11" despite the exit polls not supporting the reality of that idea was just manufacturing consent.

People need to stop using Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads, and Instagram.
- I wrote my deletion post just a few hours ago actually. Cited sexism, homophobia, anti-immigration, no more fact-checking etc. I said I'd leave the account up for a few days in case anyone wanted to arrange a way to stay in contact (since I've had friends there since 2007), but after that I'm gone.
  
  Cite this article before you go.
  
  I remember back in 2017 or so when I left Facebook and did the same, only a handful arranged to keep contact otherwise. Ever since if I’ve met anyone from those years by accident, they’ve been very bitter that I just left them and didn’t stay in contact.
  So just kind of a warning here, not everyone will be normal about it. It’s truly weird since I did the same; left a clear announcement I’d leave and hoped those interested would get in touch to figure out another way. Still so many, even after so many years, can feel betrayed and hurt because of that.
- They won't.
- Facebook, Instagram and Threads are easy, I was never on Threads and largely used the others for following people and groups rather than actively posting.
  WhatsApp is the tricky one as all my friends and family are on there and it is pretty important. I could get some people to move to Matrix but not everyone. Luckily, it's the one that is the most difficult to enshittify. Still...

Soon the Metaverse will resemble a classic CoD lobby.
- Does the metaverse even exist? Like is it a thing people use?
  
  This video is from last year and I doubt anything's changed. It's pretty funny if you haven't seen it
- I'm just happy to see the old internet make a come back.
  I'd rather be called the n-word by someone claiming to be having sexual relations with my mother.
  Because I'm tired of hearing about how "PDF-files" went and "game-ended themselves", because they had "corn" on their phones.
  I prefer cesspools to a society so impossibly polite that it can only be a cover for a dystopia.
  
  Yup. It's insane that Demolition Man is becoming a non-fiction work.

They already allowed it on Facebook, they just pretended they didn't while that kind of speech thrived on Facebook.

So will the EU call him up to explain or do nothing?
Dude does realise he operates outside of the US theatre as well, yeah? And his shitty site was already drawing heat from many governments.
- That's where things get even more worrying.
  As it stands, he still has to abide by EU and British laws but then there's this:
  
  That suggests that social media laws could be part of the negotiation with other countries who don't want to get wrecked by tariffs.
  As weakening those laws will lead to an increase in unchallenged far right posts, they could have knock on effects in elections. Trump will have seen how effective the changes at Xitter were for him, so spreading that to other social media platforms is already a win for him but being able to impact the political landscape elsewhere would be a bonus - France and German are having problems fending off the far right and if they gained control they'd be a lot more compliant to his demands which has knock-on effects for the EU and NATO.
  
  The far right hates america more than you can imagine. They would be more likely to leave NATO than talking to the USA
- These changes are only happening in the US. They wouldn’t be allowed to do this in the EU anyway, not without being sued loads.
  
  His website and the posts in question are accessible from the EU though.

It feels like the statements about the removal of fact-checking (which is all I heard about on the news) is misdirection, so the changes made deep in their policy documents get less attention than they deserve.

Elon Musk is gay
- Don't insult us by association
  
  He said he's gay, not that he's a shark fucker. Unless you're a gay shark fucker? 🤔

15 years in the making to unban "fake and gay"

I'll bite. Meta, obviously, never actually cared about free speech. Zuckerberg also said that they are about to flood the platforms with AI bots to increase engagement. I'd say getting rid of fact checkers is only to avoid having their own bots automatically brought down by their own moderation. The rest is a façade
- Astute observation. I'm glad I stopped using the platform years ago but it seems like they're focused on trying to innovate their tech more than the actual engagement.

Something tells me that Facebook does not feel the same if you say that about Republicans.
- If they abandon the capacity to moderate, they won't be able to check that either, unless there's some AI model that can detect leftists easily. A McCarthyismAI.
  
  Let me just say it wouldn't shock me if there is.

The timing of this right before the incoming us admin is not a coincidence.
- It should be no surprise. Zuckerberg and Sandberg met primarily with conservatives for years because they wouldn't stop complaining about how unfair the internet is with all this censorship on the platform. Waah.
- Zucc was spotted arriving at Mar a lardo with knee pads

Just the latest salvo in the proxy class war.
The bigoted, hateful hard right-wingers have been and are being very deliberately and methodically indoctrinated into serving as the footsoldiers in the privileged parasite class's proxy war against the left.
And Meta is ready to play its part.

Because they're gay or trans, or because they're on Facebook?

Idk im Trans and I also have depression :3
(Im guessing that's not what this means tho)

I wonder what broad over generalizations I can get away with about conservatives and liberals that may potentially harm them?
- You could try by suggesting that religious people are.delusional and see how it goes.
  
  You get shadowbanned, I tried.
  
  I've have been doing that for 20+ years and have been getting somewhere 🤔

They already did not enforce the rules related to that...
- They don't enforce rules at all
  
  They enforce anti-bullying, and by that I mean calling bigots bigots is considered as bullying by Facebook.

Oh yeah sure, THIS is what you people should be focusing on. Not on how to win voters for the next elections by NOT focusing on the same shit the electorate already told you they didn't care about, noOOooo.
Instead let's just ignore what we didn't learn from them, and double down! After all, the proles are too stupid to know better than an echo chamber!
- Trump campaign fucking smashed it. They live in current age and played us all.
  But how much did we hear about Gaza and Israel? That's all sorted now, yeah? It makes me fucking sick how they used a genocide to turn us against their opponent when they themselves are going to be worse in every measurable way possible.
  I hate how gullible people have gotten.

When you finish reading this comment, you will forget you were ever gay.
- ...b-but I was never Gay!

Id bet Mark Zuckerberg has mental illness. Having the level of wealth that he has makes connecting with common people nigh impossible and leaves his pool of potential friends limited a handful of people who themselves focus on hoarding wealth that they don't even have any real use for.
Getting used to the power and comfort his billions give him means he has to worry about one day losing what he has attained, and forces him to justify to himself the possession of so much wealth while others starve.
I see no way someone can exist in that space for years on end without it warping their sanity into an uncaring money hoarder obsessed with making his numbers higher.
- Id bet Mark Zuckerberg has mental illness. Having the level of wealth that he has makes connecting with common people nigh impossible and leaves his pool of potential friends limited a handful of people who themselves focus on hoarding wealth that they don’t even have any real use for.
  I don't think you can truly become a billionaire without having some sort of problems. That amount of money is so unfathomably large you can't achieve it without exploitation on some level or another. Obviously people might use and abuse one another unintentionally, but when you've done so economically to the degree of earning billions?
- I would agree:
  These are some common signs of ASPD:
  undefined
  
  Lack of empathy for others Impulsive behavior Attempting to control others with threats or aggression Using intelligence, charm, or charisma to manipulate others Not learning from mistakes or punishment Lying for personal gain Showing a tendency toward physical violence and fights Generally superficial relationships Sometimes, stealing or committing other crimes
  ...
  https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/signs-sociopath

Isn't greed a mental illness too? Besides it's one of the seven deadly sins. So much for those christian-wannabes.

Delete it

In other words, Meta now appears to permit users to accuse transgender or gay people of being mentally ill because of their gender expression and sexual orientation.
This is nothing new. They've never cared about hate speech or taken it seriously, they're just admitting it now.

surprised_pikachu.jpg

So because one major party is spouting racist garbage that means Facebook needs to follow?

Ok but wasn't this already a thing ?

Seems like Meta has a collective mental illness

So let's talk about Peter Thiel, right?

Finally the oppression is over, finally. (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻)

Some of them do have mental illness, just like some straight people have mental illness
- the company now says it allows “allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation”
  “trans people disproportionately face mental health concerns including depression and anxiety” ✅ OK in my book
  “you are trans, so you are mentally ill” ❌ reductive, hateful, and a flat out lie, but approved by Meta now apparently
  
  Isn't that the same thing just said nicely vs not nicely
- The issue is, people want to argue LGBTQ+ people are like that due to mental illness, and thus either need to be corrected through torture usually disguised as treatment, or must be removed from society and/or the genepool.
- Like fuckerburg
  I also love how someone actually got offended and downvoted you for saying literal fact that a human, can have mental illness.
  
  Everything gets downvoted on lemmy, that's why I turned off downvoting in preferences and it's a way better experience.

Who the fuck still uses Facebook?
- I need to, because family refuses to use anything else for chat. Or at least with me, as my younger brother likely is an unironic nazi.
- A fuck of a lot of people and that's a worry.

At this rate, someday guys may be able to joke around again
This post is a work of satire

I get the sense a bunch of y’all weren’t around for the early internet.
Lots of dumb people out there and they’re doing to say all kinds of deranged shit. Grow a pair and move on.
- Real "Old Man on the Porch" vibes coming from this one. I was around for the early internet, you're completely losing touch with society and reality if you think it's the same.
  Most people at that time didn't get their news and gossip from a device in their hand. It was called a newspaper, education, or listening to your peers. Internet extremists were still considered fringe or whacko's and you had to hunt them down to learn more, they weren't blasted by an algorithm on a front loading page for you.
  People's businesses and way of life weren't determined by their access to internet and the corporations didn't have such a stranglehold across the economical board when it came to online. The hero worship of those that control the companies wasn't at such an all time high, but considered a weird cult.
  I'm not even going to go into the difference a child has on the internet today versus what a kid going through the 90's was like, there's just no comparison to what's going on now. Yeah we had obscure boards, messengers, and silly videos on multiple sites....that's seriously nothing compared to how mainstream everything has become.

“getting rid” of restrictions on speech about “topics like immigration, gender identity and gender” that the company describes as frequent subjects of political discourse and debate. “It’s not right that things can be said on TV or the floor of Congress, but not on our platforms,”
Yet when my mom tried to post about a museum visit, Facebook wouldn't let her because it contained the word "Lenin". Interesting.
- Can you elaborate?

It's not like they would stop believing those things if Facebook didn't let them express it. At least now we can argue with them in the open.
- You think you won't be banned by selective application of the rules for arguing back? I mean, best of luck to you, but this isn't a scalable solution to the problem.

I still think this whole idea that we were going to get big tech (or anyone really), as owners of the modern mediums of communication, to act as the arbiters of truth and harmful messages was always a ridiculous notion. It's both not in their interests and not in their power.
The mainstream of the liberals and the left seem to have become so obsessed with policing speech that they've nearly completely given up on meaningfully improving the material conditions of people's lives. You win the narrative by delivering real results that people can see and feel, not by trying to ban charlatans from spinning bullshit.
Change the world, and the narrative will follow. Not the other way around.
- The charlatans spinning bullshit for over 70 years is the reason we have never had anyone from "the left" in a position of power to make any meaningful change.

126 comments