Dear John,
A few weeks ago Mark Zuckerberg announced he was deleting content standards on all Meta platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Since then, with your help, we have brought together more than a dozen organizations and sent more than 74,000 direct messages to Zuckerberg challenging him to reinstate the protection of the rights of marginalized people.
Now we are escalating our combined actions, working with groups that are specifically focused on the well-being of targeted populations. And our partners at Ultraviolet, an organization focused on improving the lives of women and girls of all identities and backgrounds, will do an in-person petition delivery and press event next week at Meta headquarters to keep the pressure on.
To be clear, Meta's new policies explicitly permit users to engage in all kinds of deliberately harmful speech, intended to bully, intimidate, and attack people who do not fit the profile of the dominant white cisgender heterosexual male.
As he initiates these changes, Zuckerberg is bowing to pressure from President Trump, who had threatened the social media magnate with investigation and even prison for what he and the rival owner of X, Elon Musk, call “censorship.”
It’s clear these social media companies believe hate speech directed against specific groups and individuals is now considered acceptable standard fare for online discourse.
Social media companies must always reject explicit hate speech. Tell Meta to reinstate protections for women, the LGBTQ+ community, and people of color on their platforms now!
Leaked training materials from Meta indicate that the new policies state it is okay for users to curse at women and call them “personal property” in the context of a romantic breakup; to call homosexuality or queerness a “mental illness;” to call marginalized people “criminals” and discriminate against them in employment and other social opportunities.
Previously disallowed language reads like a list of put-downs and hateful epithets you’d never let your child say on a grammar school playground – which is what these platforms are increasingly starting to resemble. Examples of such epithets show that racism and sexism that would have been considered backward and extreme prior to the MAGA-Trump era are now mainstream.
Phrases Meta is now explicitly allowing on their sites are despicable, including “gays are freaks” and “Black people are more violent than whites.” The inhumanity is stomach-turning, a reminder that bullies must be resisted whenever and wherever they are found.
Instead of content standards and fact-checking, Meta will turn to user-driven “Community Notes.” But not only will these posts be drowned out among other user content (as they already are on X) but, in order to be posted, they will require agreement among ideologically divergent users. In other words, these notes will need to be MAGA-aligned to even show up on the site.
Meta must face public backlash and a responsibility to prevent massive online and real-world harm on their social media platforms. Demand they reinstate content standards and fact-checking now!
Thank you for standing up for human decency both on- and off-line!
Robert Reich
Inequality Media Civic Action
