Hours after CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced changes he says are designed to maximize free speech, Facebook quietly revamped its “hateful conduct” policies on Tuesday.
While Meta’s decision to end its fact-checking program received much attention on Tuesday, the social media company also quietly removed multiple references to fighting “hate speech” on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads from its “hateful conduct” webpage.
The site displays changes made to its policies, with reams of text struck through with red lines to show removed text and green highlighted text to denote added words. Sentences that once talked about cracking down on “hate speech” were revised to address combating a more general “hateful conduct” directed against people.
The changes largely eliminate specific violations, replacing them with broader descriptions of what will be considered harmful conduct. Meta no longer says it would remove “statements of inferiority, expressions of contempt or disgust; cursing; and calls for exclusion or segregation,” but it will nix “dehumanizing speech,” “harmful stereotypes,” and “allegations of serious immorality or criminality, and slurs.” Meta will continue to remove content about “Animals in general or specific types of animals that are culturally perceived as inferior (including but not limited to: Black people and apes or ape-like creatures; Jewish people and rats; Muslim people and pigs; Mexican people and worms).” Meta added it will continue to remove “calls for exclusion or segregation when targeting people based on protected characteristics.”
The changes came hours after a video on Tuesday in which Zuckerberg said that his company would no longer work with independent fact-checkers, end restrictions on topics like gender and immigration, and scale back filters that censored people for innocuous posts, The Daily Wire reported.
Meta in the updated policy said it recognizes that people sometimes share content that contains “slurs or someone else’s hate speech” to condemn such commentary or seek to use them “self-referentially or in an empowering way,” but will not axe the posts if the speaker’s intention is “clear.”
Some lines were erased but were placed elsewhere. Occasionally, sections were rewritten in different parlance. At the bottom, a note was added saying European Union users can submit legal removal requests for suspected violations of hate speech laws within their countries.
Completely gone is a section rejecting content targeting people “on the basis of their protected characteristic(s) with claims that they have or spread the novel coronavirus, are responsible for the existence of the novel coronavirus, are deliberately spreading the novel coronavirus.”
Meta offers graphs that show how prevalent “hate speech violations” have been on Facebook and Instagram. Over the past couple of years, it’s estimated that less than .1% of views showed “violating content,” while the number of content “actioned” numbered in the millions.
The recent presidential election that brought a red wave to Washington seemed like a “cultural tipping point,” Zuckerberg said in the video. He pledged to simplify policies governing content.
“We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms,” Zuckerberg said.