A lot has been said about Meta’s recently-announced moderation changes, so I won’t add too much to your reading backlog today, but I did want to comment on it after letting it simmer in my head for a bit.

Let me just start by repeating the same thing I say every time social media platform moderation comes up: Meta is a private company that creates products that they themselves own — they are not public goods or utilities. US law gives them basically full control over what content they want to allow and to encourage on their platforms. In turn, users have the choice to weigh Meta’s decisions and to choose which products they use based on their own personal criteria.

It’s possible to argue that Meta specifically is so powerful that they have a form of monopoly on social media, therefore making it so that even when they make a very unpopular decision (or twenty), people feel they have no choice but to keep using Meta products anyway. I don’t know if this is legally true, but I can say I know numerous people in my life who dislike Meta greatly, but still have numerous Meta apps installed because, “what am I going to do, not keep up with my family?”

Zuckerberg’s changes, which he made sure to make himself the face of, fall into two general buckets for me.

The first has to do with fact checking, by which I mean Zuckerberg said they’re effectively done fact checking things on their platforms and will rely on a community notes system instead. I actually do have some sympathy for the idea that social media platforms don’t need to be arbiters of truth. I also think there’s a bit of an irony that Zuckerberg wants to rely on community notes much like X has done over the last few years, even though the fact-checking groups that Meta is now no longer funding are frequently used as sources in those community notes. I guess community note submitters will just need to find some new sources. Fun.

The second part is far more upsetting to me personally, and that’s the fact that hate speech specifically directed at LGBT and racial minority groups is suddenly a-okay with Meta. Zuckerberg cited his desire to follow the “mainstream” conversation, which just so happens to have tilted towards being more openly disdainful of minority groups recently. Put another way, “it’s cool to hate gay, trans, and brown people now? Cool, let’s make sure those messages are given the welcome treatment!”

Now, Meta has long had bad moderation policies as my friend and podcast co-host Niléane has reported on before, so this isn’t particularly surprising. I think the thing that makes this feel really bad is that Zuckerberg specifically made this announcement and policy change to allow hate speech directed at specific groups. I’m not making this up either, the new guidelines given to moderators includes specific things that should be allowed to be said without consequence, including “Trans people aren't real. They're mentally ill.” and “A trans person isn't a he or she, it's an it.” I see some people say things like, “this is just how free speech works, buck up,” and with respect to my fellow white men, it’s always white men saying this to me. Imagine if your mere existence made people hate you. Imagine if you couldn’t browse your feeds without seeing replies from people tossing every slur they could at you. Imagine if your actual humanity was consistently questioned just for who you were. Now imagine if the biggest social networking company in the world came out and said that all of that chatter was fine, and that if you reported it to them they would just ignore you because it fits within their moderation policy.

Like I said at the start of this post, all of this is within Meta’s rights to do if they want. I’m not saying they should be forced to have the moderation rules I want. No, this post is just to express my personal disdain for these policies that give more speech to those spewing hate on social media, makes Meta platforms more dangerous for marginalized groups, and is effectively saying that the ability for hate speech to live on Threads, Facebook, and Instagram is more important than the safety and well being of the groups targeted by that hate.

The cherry on top of this is the whole fact that Zuckerberg tries to paint this as the clear choice based on the culture, but it’s so plain to see that’s not the case. This was a decision made post-election and is meant to make incoming President Donald Trump like Zuckerberg since Trump has taken several opportunities to threaten Zuckerberg personally with literal jail time. You don’t have to take my word for it, either. Trump won the election with 49.9% of the vote. If he’d gotten 49.4% of the vote, he wouldn’t be president again and I would be willing to bet Zuckerberg doesn’t make these changes. To me, this is just like other executives giving millions to Trump’s inauguration fund: a way to show “loyalty” to the new guy in charge so that he doesn’t torpedo their companies once he’s in office. The money thing sucks, but I find this much worse.

I’ll say it again because I think it’s important: I have a pride flag permanently affixed to the top of this blog, not because I’m represented on that flag directly, but because I think LGBT (and all the rest) rights are the most important civil rights issue of my era and I truly love and support that community. They’ve had to live in the shadows for most of human history, and cultural advances over my lifetime have let them come out into society and live more full lives as their true selves. I think this is amazing, and the world is better for it. But old bigotries die hard and there’s always a resistance. Unfortunately, we’re in a bit of a backslide right now in the US and I feel terrible that many people who were feeling safer and more welcomed each year feel like they’re becoming less welcome in some regards. I am convinced that we will continue to improve as a society, but it’s hard right now. What I will say is that whether Trump got 49.9%, 49.4%, 10% or 99% of the vote, that has no impact on how I feel about the LGBT community. ❤️