Canadian groups that study and advocate for free speech have mixed feelings about Meta's changes to what is automatically considered “hateful” conduct on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, with advocates for 2SLGBTQ+ people and women pointing to concerns over words like “prostitute.” is allowed
“We're getting rid of a lot of restrictions on issues like immigration, gender identity and gender, which are frequently the subject of political debate and debate.” wrote Meta's Joel Kaplan, the company's chief global affairs officer.
The company has recently changed Hateful Conduct Policy Users can now explicitly compare “gender or sexual orientation” to mentally ill or abnormal, whereas this was previously not allowed.
Comparing other aspects of a person's identity with mental illness is still restricted by meta.
The company also removed an explicit ban on referring to women as property or objects, and removed the words “prostitute,” “slut” and “pervert” as banned words.
Meta representatives declined an interview request from CBC News, but said it's important to distinguish between abusive speech and speech that can lead to violence, and that the company doesn't believe its role is to regulate offensive matter.
“What started as a movement to be more inclusive … has come a long way. I want to make sure people can share their beliefs and experiences on our platform,” said Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta and co-founder of Facebook. Video Posted on January 7th.
The changes will have 'negative consequences', the charity says
The response from groups representing some of the affected groups in Canada was swift.
Queer-focused charity It Gets Better Canada says that, anecdotally, it's already seen a large amount of what it calls “hateful comments” on Facebook — and it's worried that things could get worse with Meta's new policy.
“These new policy changes, it will have negative consequences for 2SLGBTQ people who use social media,” said Omid Razavi, executive director of It Gets Better Canada, in an interview with CBC News.
He points out that, for many young people, social media is the only place they can communicate their identity, and clearly allowing young queer people to be called abnormal or mentally ill can have negative consequences.
“What needs to be, or what used to be, a safe place to share information, raise awareness and build community is really going into a downward spiral,” Razavi said.
He believes that codes of conduct are important ways to signal that the online community is for everyone, and that Meta's decision to remove restrictions that explicitly apply to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people may also send a message that perhaps those groups are less welcome. .
“Knowing that there are certain guidelines and that people are going to follow them or not creates at least a hopeful constraint or a sense of responsibility, or at least creates an ethical basis that the platform wants you to follow,” Razvi said.
“Removing them altogether really speaks so loudly.”
Meta, the parent-company of Facebook and Instagram, is getting rid of fact-checkers on the platforms and will instead rely on users to comment on accuracy, but experts warn that the move could increase the spread of misinformation.
James Turk, director of Toronto Metropolitan University's Center for Free Expression, also believes Meta's move could be harmful.
“Allowing LGBTQ people to be insulted, claiming they're mentally ill, while not allowing it against anyone else … makes it possible for it to expand and spread and become more part of the discourse,” Turk said.
He pointed out that while it may not violate Canada's laws against hate speech, the posts Meta now allows are “definitely hate speech.”
Civil liberties group 'mixed feelings'
“Social media users should be able to express themselves freely online, and that means being able to post dissenting, unpopular or unpleasant ideas,” said Anaïs Bussières McNicol, director of the Fundamental Freedoms Program at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA).
CCLA is an organization that advocates for freedom of expression as part of its work for civil liberties in Canada. The group says it is happy to see the social media giant prioritizing freedom of expression.
That said, McNicol says her organization has “mixed feelings” about Meta's recent announcements.
“We welcome the renewed commitment to freedom of expression, but we also have concerns about some of the specific changes made by Meta, particularly from an equality perspective,” McNicol said.
“What META has done in its policy on hateful conduct is to create exceptions, specifically allowing certain types of hate speech if it's based on gender or sexual orientation,” she said.
“Meta therefore appears to target specific groups that are already vulnerable, namely women and members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community.”
Advertisers may be concerned
Because of how many companies advertise on Facebook and Instagram, advertisers may be concerned about messages appearing next to negative posts that refer to women or derogatory language.
“Meta is a powerhouse,” said Todd Muffin, host/editor of the podcast and newsletter. Today in digital marketing. “Advertisers have a lot to worry about here.”
That's, at least in part, because it can be difficult to prevent laundry detergent ads from featuring lesbian youth in posts as mentally ill.
Muffin points out that tools advertisers use to restrict and control where their ads often don't work as promised, in his experience. His own podcast tried to avoid being associated with material about guns.
His own podcast tried to avoid being associated with content about guns, but then he received a message from a listener asking if he knew an ad for gun silencers was appearing on the show. “It turned out that they grouped that ad in the hunting category, not the firearms category, which we didn't have,” he explained.
Muffin points out that it will take time to see whether marketers decide to leave because of these changes, and how — and if — more users leave Facebook and Instagram as a result.
“The brands that are on the progressive side will be left, and then the rest of the market will wait,” he said.
Concerns have been growing for months, Calgary activists say
Victoria Bucholtz, a 2SLGBTQ+ activist, drag performer, and academic based in Calgary, says she first began noticing a lack of support for her communities from corporations in the spring of 2024, and signs that the policy changes seen today are the beginning.
“As someone who has done a lot of Pride events, I've seen a significant decrease in the number of Pride events sponsored by big corporations. They don't like the negative attention surrounding Pride for their philanthropy,” said Buchholtz, a trans woman. who holds a PhD in history and teaches at Mount Royal University in Calgary.
She also regularly runs “History with a Drag Queen” events outside of her work at the university, under her stage name, Carla Marks. In that context, she regularly uses social media to promote and promote events involving other women and other queer people. She says these rule changes could have a big impact on how other users are able to interact with her posts.
“Unfortunately, Meta's platforms, especially Instagram and Facebook, are where we get a lot of traffic,” she said, but pointed out that many women who use social media had already faced frustrating experiences before Meta's recent changes.
“If you look at the way strippers, sex workers, burlesque performers, anyone on that spectrum is treated by these platforms, it's very, very dangerous,” Buchholtz said.
The difference for him is that now, Meta's hateful conduct policy can be interpreted in multiple ways, making it “arbitrary.”
“If you want to look at those policies and say, well, you can't really call somebody a lot of naughty names, you can say. And if you want, you can say, 'Actually, I can call a woman a bitch. And a Prostitute because I'm allowed to do that.' “
Bud Light's hiring of trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney sparked a conservative backlash, but the company's handling of that backlash led to even more criticism from the 2SLGBTQ+ community.
But Buchholtz also says that negative language, especially toward women, was already common on Meta's platforms. Since Meta did not consistently act as predictable when these changes violated the old policies, for him, only an illusion could remove the previous protections.
“To use a burlesque metaphor, it's kind of the final veil being lifted, she said. “I mean, it's the final reveal.”
