Calling women ‘household objects’ now permitted on Facebook after Meta updated its guidelines

Meta is making big changes to its hateful conduct policy, hours after it said it would do away with fact checkers. (Alicia Windzio/dpa/picture alliance/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

New York — Meta on Tuesday announced sweeping changes to how it moderates content that will roll out in the coming months, including doing away with professional fact checking. But the company also quietly updated its hateful conduct policy, adding new types of content users can post on the platform, effective immediately.

Users are now allowed to, for example, refer to “women as household objects or property” or “transgender or non-binary people as ‘it,’” according to a section of the policy prohibiting such speech that was crossed out. A new section of the policy notes Meta will allow “allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality.”

Previously, such comments would have been subject to removal under the policy. The changes to Meta’s hateful conduct policy were first reported by Wired.

Meta had hinted in its announcement about its content moderation policy changes Tuesday morning that it would get rid of restrictions on certain topics, such as immigration and gender identity, and allow more political discussions. But the updated policy shows just how quickly Meta is moving to enact CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for “free expression.”

Meta on Tuesday also announced it would do away with its network of independent fact checkers in the United States and will instead rely on user-generated “community notes” to add context to posts. It also said it would adjust its automated systems that scan for policy violations, which it says have resulted in “too much content being censored that shouldn’t have been.” The systems will now be focused only on extreme violations such as child sexual exploitation and terrorism.

Zuckerberg acknowledged that the new approach will mean “that we’re going to catch less bad stuff, but we’ll also reduce the number of innocent people’s posts and accounts that we accidentally take down.”

A Meta spokesperson noted that the company will continue to prohibit attacks against certain groups, such as those based on ethnicity, race and religion, as well as prohibiting slurs, under the policy. And the spokesperson said that the company will continue enforce its policies against targeted bullying and harassment, as well as incitement of violence.

The company’s Tuesday changes come as the company and its leader have sought to curry favor with Donald Trump and other Republicans ahead of the president-elect’s second term, echoing in its announcement longstanding criticisms that Meta was “censoring” conservative voices.

Trump welcomed the changes in a press conference Tuesday and said he thinks the changes are “probably” due to threats he’s made to Zuckerberg in the past. But some experts who study the online information ecosystem raised alarms that the changes could lead to more viral false claims and hate speech on Meta’s platforms.

Among the other changes to Meta’s hateful conduct policy, the company removed a prohibition against statements denying the existence of “protected” groups, such as statements that a certain group of people doesn’t or shouldn’t exist. The policy also now allows for content arguing in favor of “gender-based limitations of military, law enforcement, and teaching jobs.”

The company also updated its “misinformation” policy to note the dissolution of its U.S.-based fact-checking network.