Lupa UOL - January 8, 2025
The changes to Meta's community guidelines — which weaken protections against gender and racial discrimination — are seen as an affront to its equality and inclusion policies. Experts interviewed by Lupa say that the measure reinforces gender and racial stereotypes on the platform's social networks and should be subject to legal action in Brazil.
On Tuesday (7), Meta announced a series of measures, including the end of the Fact-Checking Program - 3PFC in the United States and the reduction of restrictions on content about immigration and gender identity, which, according to the platform, are often the target of political discourse and debate. "What began as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to silence opinions and exclude people with different ideas, and this has gone too far," said CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
The guidelines were initially published in the English version — and were updated this Thursday (9) in the Brazilian version — and state that the platform will allow “allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, considering political and religious discourses about transgenderism and homosexuality, as well as the common and non-literal use of terms such as ‘weird’”. In other words, any user could post that transgender people are mentally ill.
“When we are talking about content moderation, we are talking about a guarantee of rights, and not necessarily a disrespect for freedom of expression. And this is a discourse that has been used for some time by those who are against the regulation of platforms”. – Débora Salles, research coordinator at NetLab.