TL;DR: Mark Zuckerburg has announced an end to fact-checking on Meta platforms. Mimicking rhetoric and tactics by free speech absolutionist Elon Musk, Zuckerburg said fact-checkers efforts had "gone too far" at degrading free speech. As a result of the move, LGBTQIA+ hate will now be allowed on Meta's platforms.
The next time you're called mentally ill for being gay or trans on Instagram, Threads or Facebook, it won’t be in violation of the platform's policies.
That's just one example of a raft of anti-LGBTQIA+ rhetoric that will now be permissible on Mark Zuckerberg's platforms. Queer people being called mentally ill is just one of many examples the platform has explicitly listed as permissible. Others include being allowed to spread lies like ‘A trans woman isn't a woman, it's a pathetic confused man’ - Platformer
The policy change came amid a sweeping announcement that Meta had "gone too far" with fact-checking and that third-party moderators were "too politically biased". Zuckerberg claimed it was "time to get back to our roots around free expression" - Meta
Starting in the US, Meta will now roll out a ‘community notes’ system in the style of Elon Musk’s X. This will also come with what the tech giant is calling a "more personalised approach to political content". Meta’s algorithms currently deprioritise anything deemed ‘political’ - that is now set to end, although the company never publicly defined what it meant by ‘political’ in the first place.
Staff at Meta have been blind sighted by the move, with insiders describing the company as in "total chaos" after the announcement - 404 Media
The news comes in a week of news out of the US about the platforms that control what, when, and how we hear the vast majority of information in our lives. Not coincidentally, they're being announced right as official proceedings for Trump becoming President take place.
What else do I need to know about Meta's anti-LGBTQIA+ rules?
This week saw several other stories about the big four social media giants. They all have critical significance to the LGBTQIA+ community, not least because of the hate our community can face online.
The gay CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, has agreed to personally donate 1 million to President-elect Trump's inaugural committee. He joins Zuckerburg's Meta, Amazon, Open AI and many other companies in doing so - Axios
The donations follow a series of meetings between the owners of tech giants and Trump, ahead of him taking office later this month. These hugely influential companies are looking to cosy up to the new administration which has promised to clamp down on Trans+ rights.
Ahead of Meta's announcement about its rules changes, the company said the recent removal of LGBTQIA+ content published by high-profile queer groups, including QueerAF, to Facebook was a "technical error" - ABC News
Elsewhere, Apple has been urged to withdraw an AI news product that is falsifying news reports and spreading misinformation to millions - BBC
TikTok has also been in the headlines. A US Supreme Court case could uphold a nationwide ban on Google and Apple hosting the app in their stores. This is something Trump advocated for, but he has now changed his mind following a series of meetings with the platform’s owners - BBC
Analysis: Why should the LGBTQIA+ community pay attention to what these tech bros are up to?
This series of headlines, all from the last week, are not disconnected. They paint a bigger picture of a handful of tech bros conducting a social experiment that will unlock a raft of hate towards LGBTQIA+ people, purely to keep an incoming ultra-conservative president happy.
This is being enabled not only by the likes of Zuckerburg and Musk, but even gay CEO Tim Cook, who has donated to Trump and is allowing a product that is spreading misinformation to millions to continue to run.
This comes in a context of increasing real-world hate across the globe for years. In the UK alone, hate crimes have risen by 503% since 2011.
While these billionaires cosy up to Trump in an effort to protect their own interests and wealth, it's our lives that will be thrown under the bus.
In a time when information about us looks set to be distorted further, it’s even more crucial we all take action to improve our media literacy. Look out for misinformation and don't feed the algorithms by responding to trolls.
Perhaps it’s time we are more actively asking ourselves how much time we spend on these billionaire’s social media platforms who make money out of our attention. The less time we spend there, the more time and energy we have to collectively support queer activism and make a difference for our communities.
Thank goodness, you're already in the best place to get our fact-checked, LGBTQIA+ delivered, quality queer journalism
The world's most powerful men are lining up to make it harder for you to see it anywhere else.
Meta, Apple and X all supported Trump's ascent to power whether by donations or explicit support this week, throwing LGBTQIA+ people under the bus to do so.
So much of our world is determined by the handful of unelected billionaire straight white guys behind these companies.
Their algorithms control what we see, when we see it and how we're allowed to engage with it. This is an unprecedented accumulation of power that the world has never seen before.
To run our independent outlet, we need to grow - and fast - to keep the lights on and keep delivering the information you need to navigate what looks set to be a dark period of time for all of us, whether we be gay, queer or Trans+.
You can help us do that in one of two ways:
- Sign up to our newsletter so our journalism skips the algorithms that filter queer content, and comes direct to your inbox.
- Or better still spare a as little as £4 quid a month and support us as a QueerAF member.We need to quadruple our efforts to invest in new ways to grow, and move away from the cascade of social media platforms failing our community.
