In what CEO Mark Zuckerberg said was a reaction to political bias and a lack of trust in the system, Meta removed fact-checking systems from Facebook, Instagram and Thread’s and loosened hate-speech prevention in early January.
In announcing the change, Zuckerberg said Meta’s social media platforms will adopt Community Notes instead of company fact-checking, providing contributors the opportunity to manually evaluate the accuracy of a post, similar to X’s community notes. Zuckerberg said this approach enables a diverse range of community perspectives to determine whether posts are misleading or need more context, eliminating company bias.
“Experts, like everyone else, have their own biases and perspectives,” Meta said in its press release. “This showed up in the choices some made about what to fact-check and how. Over time we ended up with too much content being fact-checked that people would understand to be legitimate political speech and debate. Our system then attached real consequences in the form of intrusive labels and reduced distribution. A program intended to inform too often became a tool to censor.”
Community Notes allow users to leave “fact-checks” on posts. Zuckerberg said some people believe giving more people a voice is driving division rather than bringing us together.
“More people across the spectrum believe that achieving the political outcomes they think matter is more important than every person having a voice,” Zuckerberg said in Meta’s press release. “I think that’s dangerous.”
Junior Xander Deisseroth likes the new move and said community-based fact-checking can minimize polarization.
“I think Community Notes is gonna solve what I view is a really big problem with media today, which is media platforms only expressing one viewpoint, and that leads to a lot of political polarization,” Deisseroth said. “If a platform offers more than one viewpoint — which Community Notes allow for — then, people are getting a more varied set of perspectives which will help get to the actual truth as opposed to a version of the truth that is biased.”
Although this change may prevent company bias, Jenni Olson, Senior Director of the Social Media Safety Program at GLAAD –– a National LGBTQ+ media advocacy organization –– said Meta’s removal of hate speech prevention makes LGBTQ+ communities more vulnerable. She said Meta modified sections of its hateful conduct policy to allow hate speech, citing, “We do allow 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.’”
“They are not only permitting anti-LGBT hate speech, but they’re intentionally employing anti-LGBTQ language themselves in the hate speech policy, which is a complete break with best practices in content moderation,” Olsen said. “One of the components of the policy uses this word, ‘transgenderism,’ which is a right wing anti-trans trope that implies that being transgender is an ideology rather than an innate identity.”
Olson said having a company like Meta allow hate speech towards the LGBTQ community is appalling.
“The allegations of mental illness or abnormality are a horrible right construct,” Olson said. “To say that LGBTQ people are abnormal makes me want to cry. That people could be so terrible and express such hate, but particularly that a company that we think of as a trustworthy, legitimate company would express such extreme anti-LGBT hate is really shocking.”
But addressing hate speech is not an issue exclusive to Meta. Computer science teacher Roxanne Lanzot said hate speech is prevalent on every social media platform.
“I largely stay off of social media, and part of the reason why is because I feel like it’s bombarded with hate speech,” Lanzot said. “Even the social media that I can’t avoid using, like YouTube, I never look at the comments because the times that I have, the terrible, awful things that people are saying, that are totally unrelated, can just fill you with such a deeply hopeless, dark and negative perspective of humanity.”
Olson said this hate speech may foster an environment of fear and enable harassment. In order to combat it, she said allies need to stand up for the LGBTQ+ community so they can have a voice.
“Much of what happens for LGBTQ people, for people of any protected characteristic — for instance women — is that you’re afraid to say certain things or nervous that if you say something, you might get attacked,” Olson said. “That (causes) extraordinarily higher anxiety for people from historically marginalized communities and that means that it actually suppresses my free speech. (If) I am afraid to say anything because I’m going to be attacked, and that in itself is a harm. LGBTQ people, and especially trans people, right now really need everyone to stand up and express values that this is not okay.”
Not only can hate speech suppress voices, Lanzot said encountering these hate-filled platforms can negatively affect mental well-being.
“One of the things that I learned really early on as a young person was that once you see something, whatever that thing is, there’s no way to unsee it,” Lanzot said. “Young people are naturally curious about all sorts of things, as they should be, (but) it is easy to stumble upon things that might harm you … emotionally or psychologically.”
And as companies remove automated guardrails, Lanzot said more responsibility falls on the individual.
“Be ever mindful of what you’re looking at and how it affects you,” Lanzot said. “How do you feel afterwards? Do you feel better? Do you feel refreshed? Do you feel entertained? Or do you feel a bit sad? Do you feel a bit weirded out? Do you feel a bit disconnected? Pay attention to your own reaction to things. If the organizations are not going to protect you from content that might be harmful, it’s even more important to think critically and question everything that you see and read. Think critically about who created this and what was their motivation.”
Despite less guardrails on social media, Lanzot said the younger generation needs to be mindful as it continues using social media.
“Your generation is saddled with a tremendous talk in terms of how to navigate this brave new world of technological innovation,” Lanzot said. “Stay aware of your emotional state. Stay aware of what brings you joy, and stay aware of what doesn’t and what brings you despair, hopelessness or general bad feelings. Try to make the best decisions you can.”
Meta did not respond to a request for comment against these allegations.