Meta openly allows anti-LGBTQ+ hate speech now

This is not freedom of expression

Note: As I look forward to 2025, one thing I want to do a lot more of is writing. I want to keep the style varied, but one thing I want to do is offer more, shorter pieces that take less than a day to write (some of my posts take months). I will still write longer pieces, hoping for roughly once a month on those. This is my first attempt at one of the shorter pieces. It’s still nearly 3,000 words, so clearly I need to work on that - but it did take less than a day to write! Progress! These shorter pieces will be more opinion, fewer formal citations, and less rigorous, but will always be about something I think deserves your attention.

---

Second Note: I am not a lawyer. I’ve done my best to provide citations for legal claims, but please add “As far as I understand” as a qualifier to pretty much any statement on law in this piece.

The First Amendment to the US Constitution protects speech, expression, and more from government suppression. This was and still is a vital component of our democracy, and I strongly support it. Historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall coined this famous phrase in 1906: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”¹

Over the years, the judicial branch of our government has had to weigh in on how far these freedoms go. In doing so, many exceptions have been carved out, such as defamation or incitement to imminent lawless action². One contentious type of speech that remains protected is that of hate speech³. This is important in part because hate speech is so difficult to define that anti-hate speech laws could easily be weaponized for political means, precisely what the First Amendment was trying to avoid.

More recently in the country’s history, tremendous debate has been had over the decisions and obligations of social media platforms when it comes to hate speech. In general, organizations and individuals have every right to enforce rules around the speech they will tolerate. For example, a conservative Christian church can legally deny membership to someone who says, “God blesses gender transition.” I would disagree with that church, and I can say so publicly, but I have no legal recourse against that church.

On an individual level, I can (and will) block, remove, and hide comments on this blog, my Youtube channel, or in response to me on social media platforms. This has been incredibly important to me on platforms such as Twitter where I regularly received some of the most hateful comments I could imagine.

• Allegations of pedophilia

• Death threats

• Accusations of mental illness

• Being called “it”

• Anti-trans slurs

• Intentional, aggressive misgendering

• And so much more

I have no legal obligation to allow those to exist in spaces I control. If someone came to my house and started saying that “transness is a disease”, I would ask them to apologize. If they refused, I would ask them to leave.

Furthermore, those who own social media spaces have the right to decide what speech is allowable. They are providing a meeting space of sorts, and they can decide what’s acceptable and what’s not. So, Bluesky can ban someone for saying, “Trans women are men.” And, likewise, 4chan could ban someone for saying, “Trans women are women.”

I use this lengthy preamble to underscore this: The First Amendment has little to do with any decisions any social media platform makes about what speech is and is not allowable. When a platform chooses to limit the types of speech on it, its users may disagree with those decisions, but there is no legal issue with this.

Similarly, platforms have broad freedom to allow speech, with narrow exceptions⁴.

Meta rolls back limits on anti-LGBTQ+ hate speech, among others

On Tuesday, January 7th, Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp⁵, and Threads, rolled out an update to their “Hateful Conduct” policy⁶. Importantly, I am making no claim that what they have done is illegal. Others have already covered some of the highlights⁷, but I always like to get into the primary source and go through it in detail.

First, it has always been permissible on Meta’s platforms to say things like, “Homosexuality is a sin.” That’s a religious belief and expresses no wish of harm toward someone. Second, death threats or other wishes of violence are still prohibited across the board.

But a number of changes allow for much more hateful and problematic speech than was previously acceptable on Meta’s platforms, which will make it much more difficult for LGBTQ+ people to feel safe on them. Let’s look at the changes. These are screenshots from Meta’s policy page, with additions in green highlight, removals in red strikethrough.

No longer listing the impact of hate speech

We believe that people use their voice and connect more freely when they don’t feel attacked on the basis of who they are. That is why we don’t allow hateful conduct speech on Facebook, Instagram, or Threads. It creates an environment of intimidation and exclusion, and in some cases may promote offline violence.

Previously, Meta included this statement about the impact of hate speech: “It creates an environment of intimidation and exclusion, and in some cases may promote offline violence.” In doing this, Meta dramatically reduces the “why” behind these policies, just to allowing people to, “use their voice and connect more freely”. But this is coming at a time when, for example, trans people have been the targets of stochastic terror, in which prominent individuals spread hateful rhetoric which leads to real world violence and threats of violence⁸. In 2020 and 2021, there was a dramatic rise in hate crimes against people in the Asian and Pacific Islander community, due in part to those spreading hateful rhetoric blaming them for the spread of COVID-19⁹.

Hate speech drives real world impact towards marginalized people. And Meta no longer recognizes that fact.

Supremacist speech is now allowed.

We remove define a hate speech attack as dehumanizing speech, allegations of serious immorality or criminality, and slurs. We also remove; statements of inferiority, expressions of contempt or disgust; cursing; and calls for exclusion or segregation. We also prohibit the use of harmful stereotypes, which we define as

Previously, Meta forbid “statements of inferiority.” Now, that’s missing. That is, statements like, “whites are better than blacks” are now permitted on Meta’s platforms. The rest of the stricken comments were moved to a later piece of the paragraph, but “statements of inferiority” were not.

Exclusion and insulting language towards LGBTQ+ people and immigrants are permitted now

In the previous policy, it was acceptable to “use gender-exclusive language to control membership in a health or positive support group, such as a breastfeeding group for women only.” They could also “express contempt or curse at a gender in the context of a romantic breakup,” presumably making room for statements like, “omg men are the worst,” when their boyfriend breaks up with them. Those were the only acceptable instances in which someone could use exclusionary language around sex or gender.

But now?

People also sometimes express contempt or curse at a gender in the context of a romantic break-up. Other times, they 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.to control membership in a health or positive support group, such as a breastfeeding group for women only. Our policies are designed to allow room for these types of speech but require people to clearly indicate their intent. Where intention is unclear, we may remove content....

Now, someone can advocate for gender or sex exclusion for the following:

• Access to bathrooms¹⁰

• Access to schools

• Military roles

• Law Enforcement roles

• Teaching roles

In other words, it’s now acceptable for someone to argue that I should not be permitted to be a teacher, based on my being a transgender woman. Presumably, this also permits people to say, “women shouldn’t be police officers”, or “only women should be teachers.”

Additionally, people can “call for exclusion or use insulting language” in the context of discussing “political or religious topics”, including when discussing “transgender rights, immigration¹¹, or homosexuality.” There are no limitations on context here. It’s acceptable to use insulting language about queer folx and immigrants now, full stop.

Dehumanization

Dehumanization is a common tactic by groups with power to make their enemies seem even more, “other”, and it is something I personally try very, very hard to avoid. E.g., I will not say “so and so is a monster”, because they are a human and I want to respect that.

Here’s the new dehumanization policy:

Dehumanizing speech list - I apologize for the lack of caption but the bulleted list won’t format right. Please see the original page here if you need the text.

Newly allowed, include:

• Comparing women to household objects

• Referring to Black people as farm equipment (this specific one is now forbidden as a “harmful stereotype” elsewhere in the policy).

• Calling trans or non-binary people, “it.”

All of those are reprehensible. Regarding calling trans or non-binary people, “it”, this is infuriating, as there’s very few words that truly offend me other than that one¹². Viewing people as “it”, also leads to violence, as shown by the murderers of Brianna Ghey repeatedly referring to her as “it.”¹³

Feces and filth are of course also horrible to allow, but the worst one in that category is the allowance of comparison to disease. Many anti-trans people refer to trans people as a “plague” or spread rumors that transgender identification is a “social contagion” (which is false). The framing of any group as a “disease” or “cancer” implies that the broader population will not be healthy until that group is eliminated, which can obviously serve as pretext for violence up to an and including genocide.

Go ahead, advocate for erasure and genocide

Statements denying existence (including but not limited to: "[protected characteristic(s) or quasi-protected characteristic] do not exist", "no such thing as [protected charactic(s) or quasi-protected characteristic]" or “[protected characteristic(s) or quasi-protected characteristic] shouldn’t exist”)

The new allowances of denying that groups even exist (something I was told about trans people often on Twitter) are quite bad. But that last one is beyond the pale, allowing for targeting any group with “That group shouldn’t exist.” Black people? Women? Muslims? Jews? Christians? Disabled people? The elderly? Trans people? Gay people? Immigrants? On Meta’s platforms, feel free to argue that your least favorite group just shouldn’t exist. Not just that they shouldn’t be in a given space. Not just that they shouldn’t be in a given country. But that the group in question just should cease existing. I cannot begin to understand what went into making this acceptable on Meta’s platforms.

Now inclusive of exclusion!

Meta’s policies discuss four types of exclusion: General, Political, Economic, and Social. All four are forbidden, but with exceptions in the rules about Economic and Social exclusion.

Please see original for text (again, sorry - formatting would not work right here)

In economic exclusion, exceptions are made for “gender-based limitations”, as discussed earlier. Similarly, discussions of exclusion “based on sexual orientation” is fine, but only if it’s based on “religious beliefs.” That is, you can argue against the inclusion of trans people regardless of your reason. But to argue against gay people, you at least have to claim that you have a religious reason. But nevertheless, both are now permitted. Social exclusion is now permitted in more areas when it’s “sex or gender-based”.

I cannot emphasize this enough: sex and gender (for any reason) and sexual orientation (for religious reasons) are the only two cases where exclusion is permissible.

You can hate us because lots of people hate us

Bigotry is still bigotry even if lots of people are bigots. Racism is still racism even if lots of people are racists. The “they were a man of their time” argument does not exonnerrate someone from charges of racism if they owned slaves, the only thing it does is perhaps give us a little sense of “maybe they didn’t know it was wrong.”

Make sure you don’t miss it. You cannot refer to any group as having a mental illness, except those who are queer. The truly absurd justification is “given the political and religious discourse.” Basically, Meta is saying, “hate speech is fine as long as there are enough people doing it to make it look like ‘discourse.’”

But guess what? Hateful language is still hateful language even if everyone agrees with it who isn’t in the group it’s targeted at. Furthermore, the phrase “mental illness” is a medical phrase. It has a definition, and those who issue standards on it do not qualify either gender identity or sexual orientation as a mental illness. Sexual orientation was depathologized in the early 70’s. Gender dysphoria was depathologized with the DSM-V in 2013. And now Meta is making it possible to say “anyone who thinks they are trans is mentally ill”, or “all gay people are mentally ill.”

Are they planning to allow allegations of intellectual inferiority of some group if at some point a large percentage of Americans think that’s true?

What do we do?

I don’t know. I know many are leaving Meta’s platforms. As someone who enjoyed Twitter prior to Elon Musk’s takeover, and then watched it devolve into the hellscape it is today, it’s difficult for me to say they are wrong. It is quite likely that these new policies will make the platforms much more difficult for queer people to exist, particularly on Instagram and Threads, where the communications are much more public.

For me, this settles the question of whether to start using Threads - my answer is no. I already have a platform on which I am not protected from hate, and I don’t need another one.

I’ve also removed Facebook from my phone and will talk with friends about moving off of Facebook Messenger going forward.

I don’t use Instagram much anymore, and that probably won’t change.

I do recommend people use Bluesky - so far it has been much more chill than the other platforms, and I hope it stays that way. I will also continue writing here on Substack and posting my videos to YouTube.

It’s awful that some of us are being forced into these decisions. Sadly, Meta took a gigantic step towards enabling hate towards queer people and others, and that means some of us just cannot be there safely anymore.

1. Hall was giving an interpretation of Voltaire’s thinking. Source: Quote Origin: I Disapprove of What You Say, But I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to Say It and Remember, That Famous Voltaire “Quote” About Free Speech Was Written By a Woman

2. Source: “Is hate speech protected by the First Amendment?” - David Hudson, The Fire.

3. Ibid.

4. For example, platforms such as YouTube are required to limit the illegal distribution of copyrighted materials.

5. Yes, I find it appalling that these mergers were allowed to begin with. This country desperately needs an overhaul of its anti-trust laws.

6. Source: “Hateful Conduct”, Meta

7. E.g., “Meta revises hate speech rules, dropping LGBTQ protections” - The Hill

8. For example, see, “After Libs of TikTok posted, at least 21 bomb threats followed”, NBC News

9. Source: “More Than 9,000 Anti-Asian Incidents Have Been Reported Since The Pandemic Began“, NPR

10. I previously wrote about why gender identity being the determining factor for restroom access is the safest option for cisgender women, in my post The Bathroom Question.

11. I find so much of the rhetoric around immigration coming from Trump and many of his supporters to be completely abhorrent, and for Facebook to increase its tolerance for hateful conduct towards immigrants (of all statuses, even naturalized citizens) is despicable.

12. Please note that some trans people actually prefer the pronoun “it”, and that should be respected, but only ever use “it” if the trans person expresses that preference.

13. Source: Wikipedia