“It’s not right that things can be said on TV or the floor of Congress, but not on our platforms. These policy changes may take a few weeks to be fully implemented,” said Joel Kaplan, Meta’s newly-appointed Chief Global Affairs Officer in a blog post.
Apart from this, Meta has even updated its hateful conduct policy by adding new types of content that users are now allowed to post on its platforms, effective immediately, CNN reported.
What is allowed now?
As per a section of the policy prohibiting such speech that was crossed out, Meta users are now allowed to call women “household objects or property or objects in general.”
People are allowed to call “black people farm equipment” and “transgender or non-binary people as ‘it’”.
The new section of the policy states the company now 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’”.
Other changes include removing content targeting a person or group based on their “protected characteristic(s) with claims that they have or spread the novel coronavirus” or “are deliberately spreading the novel coronavirus.”
According to reports, users may now get to associate the COVID-19 pandemic with Chinese people in the absence of this provision.
Through the policy on hateful conduct, Meta is said to have brought in a provision wherein users get to argue for gender-based limitations of military, law enforcement, and teaching jobs.
“We also allow the same content based on sexual orientation, when the content is based on religious beliefs,” read the guidelines.
The new guidelines further mention that people use “sex- or gender-exclusive language when discussing access to spaces often limited by sex or gender, such as access to bathrooms, specific schools, specific military, law enforcement, or teaching roles, and health or support groups.”
“Other times, they call for exclusion or use insulting language in the context of discussing political or religious topics, such as when discussing transgender rights, immigration, or homosexuality. Finally, sometimes people curse at a gender in the context of a romantic break-up.”
