ANALYSIS | Meta says new rule allowing users to call gay people mentally ill is about free expression — others disagree
January 15, 2025
Canadian groups who study and advocate for free expression have mixed feelings on Meta’s changes to what is automatically considered “hateful” conduct on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, as advocates for 2SLGBTQ+ people and women point out concerns over terms like “whore” being allowed.
“We’re getting rid of a number of restrictions on topics like immigration, gender identity and gender that are the subject of frequent political discourse and debate,” wrote Meta’s Joel Kaplan, the company’s chief global affairs officer.
The company recently changed its hateful conduct policy to state that users can now explicitly compare “gender or sexual orientation” to being mentally ill or abnormal, when this was previously not allowed.
Comparing other aspects of a person’s identity to mental illness is still banned by Meta.
The company has also removed an explicit restriction on referring to women as property or objects, and removed the words “whore,” “slut,” and “perverts” as restricted terms.
Meta representatives refused an interview request from CBC News, but said it’s important to note differences between offensive speech versus speech that can lead to violence, and that the company does not believe its role is to regulate what is offensive.
“What started as a movement to be more inclusive … has gone too far. I want to make sure that people can share their beliefs and their experiences on our platforms,” said Meta CEO and Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg in a video posted on Jan. 7.
Changes will have ‘negative consequences,’ charity says
The backlash from groups representing some of the affected groups in Canada was quick.
Queer-focused charity It Gets Better Canada has said that, anecdotally, it had already noticed a large amount of what it called “hate comments” on Facebook — and it’s concerned things could get worse given Meta’s new policy.
“These new policy changes, they’re going to have negative consequences to 2SLGBTQ people using social media,” said It Gets Better Canada executive director Omid Razavi in an interview with CBC News.
He pointed out that, for many young people, social media has been one of the only places they could communicate about their identity, and explicitly allowing young queer people to be called abnormal or mentally ill could have negative outcomes.
“What needs to be, or what used to be, a safe space for sharing information, raising awareness and building community is really going to move towards a downward spiral,” said Razavi.
He believes that codes of conduct are important ways to signal that an online community is for everyone, and that Meta’s decision to remove restrictions that explicitly apply to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people could also send a message that perhaps those groups are less welcome.
“Knowing that there are certain guidelines in place and whether or not people choose to follow them at least creates that sense of a hopeful barrier or responsibility, or at least a moral ground that the platform that you are on wishes for you to abide by,” Razavi said.
“Removing those altogether really just speaks so loudly.”
Facebook and Instagram’s parent-company Meta is getting rid of fact checkers on the platforms and will instead rely on users to comment on accuracy, but experts warn the move will likely increase the spread of misinformation.
James Turk, director of the Centre for Free Expression at Toronto Metropolitan University, also believes Meta’s move could be damaging.
“Allowing insults to LGBTQ folks, claiming they’re mentally ill, while not allowing it against anybody else makes it possible … to amplify and spread that and make that more part of the discourse,” said Turk.
He pointed out that while it may not violate Canadian laws against hate speech, the posts now allowed by Meta are “certainly hateful speech.”
Civil liberties group’s ‘mixed feelings’
“Social media users should be able to express themselves freely online, and that means being able to post dissenting, unpopular or unpleasant views,” said Anaïs Bussières McNicoll, director of the Fundamental Freedoms Program at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA).
The CCLA is an organization that advocates for freedom of expression as part of its work lobbying for civil liberties in Canada. The group says it’s pleased to see a social media giant prioritizing freedom of expression.
That said, McNicoll says her organization has “mixed feelings” about Meta’s recent announcements.
“We do see favourably the renewed commitment to freedom of expression, but we also have concerns about some of the specific changes made by Meta, especially from an equality perspective,” said McNicoll.
“What Meta did in its policy about hateful conduct is create exceptions, specifically allowing certain types of hateful speech if it is based on gender or sexual orientation,” she said.
“So Meta seems to be targeting specific groups that are already vulnerable, namely women and members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community.”
Advertisers may have concerns
Advertisers could be concerned about their messages showing up next to negative posts referring to women or queer people with insulting language, because of how many companies advertise on Facebook and Instagram.
“Meta is a powerhouse,” said Tod Maffin, host/editor of the podcast and newsletter Today in Digital Marketing. “Advertisers have a lot to worry about here.”
That is, at least in part, because it could be difficult to block an advertisement for, say, laundry detergent from showing up on a post that calls lesbian youth mentally ill.
Maffin pointed out that tools advertisers use to restrict and control where their ads show up often do not work as promised, in his experience. His own podcast tried to prevent being associated with content about guns.
His own podcast tried to prevent being associated with content about guns, but then he got a message from a listener asking if he was aware that ads for gun silencers were appearing on the show. “It turns out that they had grouped that ad not in the guns category, but in the hunting category, which we had not,” he explained.
Maffin pointed out it will take time to see if marketers decide to leave because of these changes, and that will depend on how — and if — many users leave Facebook and Instagram as a result.
“The brands that are on the progressive side will leave, and then the rest of the market will wait,” he said.
Concerns brewing for months, says Calgary activist
Victoria Bucholtz, a 2SLGBTQ+ activist, drag performer, and academic based in Calgary, says she first started feeling like there was less support for her communities from corporations in the spring of 2024, and hints that was the beginning of the policy changes seen today.
“As someone who does a lot of Pride events, I noticed a remarkable reduction in the number of Pride events that were sponsored by larger corporations. They did not like having negative attention for their charitable actions around Pride,” said Bucholtz, a trans woman who holds a PhD in history and teaches at Calgary’s Mount Royal University.
She also regularly runs “History with a Drag Queen” events outside of her work at the university, under her stage name, Karla Marx. In that context, she regularly uses social media to promote and publicize events involving other women and other queer people. She says these rule changes could drastically impact how other users are able to interact with their posts.
“Unfortunately, those platforms from Meta, particularly Instagram and Facebook, are where we find a lot of traffic,” she said, but pointed out that many women using social media faced a frustrating experience even before Meta’s recent changes.
“If you look at the way that strippers, sex workers, burlesque artists, anyone in that spectrum is treated by these platforms, it’s very, very dangerous,” said Bucholtz.
The difference to her is that now, Meta’s hateful conduct policy can be interpreted in so many ways, it makes it “arbitrary.”
“If you want to look at those policies and say, well, you can’t really call anybody too many naughty names, you can say that. And if you want, you can say, ‘Actually, I can call a woman a slut and a whore because I’m allowed to do that, too.’ “
Bud Light’s hiring of trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney prompted conservative backlash, but the company’s handling of that backlash led to even more criticism from the 2SLGBTQ+ community.
But Bucholtz also says that negative language, particularly toward women, was already common on Meta’s platforms. These changes may simply take away previous protections that were, to her, only an illusion, in that Meta didn’t consistently take predictable actions when older policies were violated.
“To use a burlesque metaphor, this is the kind of final stripping away of the last veil, she said. “I mean, this is the final reveal.”
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