Total Chaos at Meta: Employees Protest Zuckerberg's Anti LGBTQ Changes | Hacker News Reader

Total Chaos at Meta: Employees Protest Zuckerberg's Anti LGBTQ Changes

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58 pointsghostpepper19 comments

> the company would be getting “back to our roots around free expression” to allow “more speech and fewer mistakes.”

Regardless of anyone's opinion on this move, as a long-time user it's never felt like Facebook was about free speech.

I left FB in 2012 mostly because they wouldn’t allow me to share articles about how to properly secure your profile and posts. These were all innocuous sources such as Ars Technica that were pro-privacy.

The blocks were immediate, which suggested there was a blocklist or URLs that FB did not want you to broadcast to your friends if they were even marginally critical of FB.

Looking back, staying off of Meta properties was probably the wisest move I could have made.

I got two posts blocked only: (summary) "I'm back in town, does anyone want to hang out" and a marketplace post selling a cable, which they can't tell apart from someone trying to sell a tv cable service/access. And I'm sure I posted something actually questionable over the years.

Whatever the system they were using, it's terrible quality and I'm sure they could improve it.

That meta specifically green light harassment of minority groups, while giving specific examples of what bigotry is okay to express, is just mind boggling.

What on earth could possess them to specifically carve out those things beyond pandering to an extreme audience?

I completely agree. When I first heard about the changes, I honestly thought "I may not totally agree, but it sounds reasonable." But then I read the actual content rules, and I was completely gobsmacked. As you put it, it essentially forbids hate speech but explicitly and specifically has a carve out for gay and transgender people - the exact language is

> Mental characteristics, including but not limited to allegations of stupidity, intellectual capacity, and mental illness, and unsupported comparisons between PC groups on the basis of inherent intellectual capacity. We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation

I.e. saying "Mormon people are totally insane" is forbidden speech, but saying "Gays are totally insane" is now legit.

On the upside, it convinced me to finally delete my FB account.

Nothing. It’s all partisan theater.

Why else would you explicitly call out CA workers as being biased and the solution being to move that work to Texas? The state where the Gov recently pardoned a convicted murderer whose victim was a leftist protestor. No bias in the state of Texas!

I really like this take: https://mastodon.social/@Daojoan/113792044785308349

> The next time Meta (or any tech giant) makes a grand gesture toward progressive causes, remember this moment. Remember that the same algorithm that made them turn right will make them turn left again. The weathervane hasn’t developed a conscience — it’s just detected a new wind.

What could possess them? It's purely kissing the Trump ring. They know a new age of kleptocracy is dawning and they want their slice of it.

> beyond pandering to an extreme audience?

Yeah, no, it's that.

As it should be. Saying slurs are OK as long as you direct them towards LGBTQ people is an absolutely insane policy to hold. They weren't even kind enough to just have a vague hate speech rule that they never enforce.

I'm surprised they wrote the policy so explicitly. Those making these bizarre demands clearly believe themselves superior to the outgroups they dehumanize.

What would they do without some demographic to denigrate and use as a crutch for propping up their egos? They might find themselves angry with the people actually in charge, and we can't have that can we ;). No, safer to unleash the bots and let them run wild with the division and polarization to keep people busy.

Odd that they made that specific exception, but fwiw their changelog diff view is pretty good. Beyond that, it's a bit absurd that religion always gets a pass as though it's as innate as height, country of birth, or skin color.

It's tricky because even though it's a choice in theory - and it is in lots of places - in many others it's effectively not allowed/safe to do that. This may be even the case for a specific family situation in an otherwise free and accepting area. Many kids don't get any choice. So until you can live a fully independent life, you may be born into a religion almost as much as your other traits.

I guess I meant more as a shield for whatever you want to say. The way some bits of the overall policy read was similar to the god hates fags justification, like you get a pass because your religion discriminates against gay people and by telling you to stfu we're infringing on your rights. It's definitely lawful, but that's different than a moderation choice, but I could also have interpreted it incorrectly.

More broadly (and I'm not certain this is relevant in the case of the Meta policy, but might be) if you're going to have a policy with exceptions based on context, I don't think that context should enable carveouts for outwardly directed hateful or malicious content based on the fact a person does or does not have a protected characteristic; the context should provide margin for different interpretations of whether or not the sentiment falls into the hate category, but if it does then you're subject to the same penalty as anyone else.

As in, context should enable the interpretation of rhetoric that may contain slurs or demeaning/dehumanizing language, such that if it's directed at someone in a bigoted/prejudiced/racist manner, that person doesn't get a pass just because of their religion, ethnic background, sexuality etc..

On one hand, yes this policy is insane.

On the other hand, if you work at Meta you gave up your ethical concerns at the door, so it shouldn’t be a surprise.

Anybody have a mirror?

A black mirror?

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