What Do Meta's Updated Hate Speech Guidelines Mean for LGBTQ+ People Online?
With Zuckerberg announcing his plans for Meta earlier this week, what do they really mean for LGBTQ+ people?
The first week of 2025 hasn’t been slow for news - most of it upsetting. With the death of RuPauls Drag Race winner The Vivienne, as well as the raging wildfires across LA, it’s an apocalyptic start to the year.
So as many of us retire to social media to chill out and bathe in the luxury of silly videos of Linda from the Traitors - it appears our slither of protection online may be coming to an end after Meta announced it’s new guidelines earlier this week in relation to hate speech across its platforms.
What did Meta announce this week?
In an announcement on Tuesday Meta, which includes Facebook, Instagram, Threads and Whatsapp, revealed via a short clip mouthed by CEO Mark Zuckerberg that the company would be scrapping third party fact checkers across all platforms - replacing them with ‘community notes’, similar to those on X.
Alongside these changes, Zuckerberg continued to identify that they will be getting rid of ‘restrictions on speech’ about topics such as immigration, gender identity and gender - citing them as ‘frequent subjects of political discourse and debate’.
So, as is often the way with discussions around free speech in the upper echelons, these new guidelines aim to protect those who weaponise their prejudice and masquerade it as free speech rooted in ‘concern’.
But many within the LGBTQ+ community were left screwing their face up for just that little while longer after reading that the new legislation has left our community exempt from protections over accusations of being ‘mentally ill’ based off our sexuality and/or gender identity alone.
So what does the guidance say about LGBTQ+ people
The new guidelines set out by Zuckerberg aim to prevent people from using accusatory or prejudicial language towards other users based on their mental health - except if it pertains to their sexuality or gender identity.
The updated guidelines, as reported via Sky News state, “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’”.
So, if your uncle John wants to sit on X and call trans people mentally ill, he can now do so without repercussion. Brilliant news for free speech and the continual harmony of all users don’t you think?
Protecting the right to say that a trans woman is a man is absolutely the best way to help ensure young people are not indoctrinated by the ‘Woke agenda’ and keep them ‘safe’, but still allowing those very young people that these right wing billionaires claim to care so much about, access to deeply unsuitable and damaging pornographic, abusive, misogynistic and racist content on their platforms without age verification will of course remain absolutely fine.
As Tate-like’ creators continue to reap the rewards of being in bed with those in charge, they receive further protections to spout their hatred, whilst those using social media for connection and lighthearted relief are once again left to fight for themselves.
So what do LGBTQ+ people do now?
Well - it’s over.
Social media, for all its sins, has helped community organisations and groups flourish across the world, providing aid and help to corners of the community that once never saw the light of day. But now, as protections continue to be eroded both in real life as well as in our online spaces, it feels as if LGBTQ+ groups are being left with no where to go.
As many sign up to Blue Sky, a platform many have moved across too after Musk’s X continued to sink into the depths of depravity, perhaps there’s a glimmer of hope that this new digital home will be able to exist as a space that remains safe for community groups and queer folk to exist upon.
But as 2025 continues, I guarantee more of us will see the importance of having our physical communities as priority when it comes to how we connect to each other moving forward. Sharing ourselves, our brands, our worlds and our most intimate details online has now become even more dangerous. The balance of forging connection and keeping safe has shifted, and our once wholesome desires and pledges to share our ‘truest selves’ with the world now must be analysed more thoroughly as to whether or not it’s worth it.
Do we really want that information in the digital sphere, where we aren’t protected against vitriol anymore? Or is it safer to start bringing our most honest selves face-to-face, in tangible community spaces where we at least have the safety that ‘analogue’ provides.
Once a way to connect with other like minded people, now it seems social media is continually becoming a tool for those with the loudest voices (and the deepest pockets) to control the narrative of the far-right. It looks like its time to pack a bag, grab the essentials and move on.