Part of the pushback is because they are still dictating what you can say except for some very particular exceptions which give away their true intentions. You're still not allowed to call someone mentally ill as an insult, unless you're doing it homophobically or transphobically, in which case it's now explicitly allowed.

https://bsky.app/profile/esqueer.net/post/3lf72fz3fas22

If they'd removed that rule altogether then it could be handwaved as merely "free speech absolutism", for better or worse, but officially stating that certain minorities are acceptable targets of abuse that's otherwise forbidden is something else entirely.

I’m still shaken by this, two days later.

It’s not a mistake or some kind of ambiguous rule that could be misread. Following is the direct quote from Meta’s new guidelines. You can’t insult people based on:

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, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like “weird.”

They’re carving out specific minorities to exclude them from protections afforded to everybody else.

It’s exactly like saying: “You can’t doxx anyone on our platform, except Jews because that’s political and religious discourse about where heathens live.”

So here we are in 2025, and this barely gets a mention in the press because they’re so overwhelmed by the president-elect pretending to invade Denmark and whatever.

I’m a middle-aged bisexual man. My childhood and early teenage years coincided with the darkest times of the HIV epidemic. At 13 I was deadly afraid of AIDS, and I’m still trying to overcome the internalized homophobia from those times. For years I just tried to blend in, dated women, eventually got married, had children. I thought society had made real progress, but now it’s starting to dawn on me that it’s a mirage like Roe vs Wade or 1920s Berlin, and it can be stripped away at any time. And I feel like a miserable coward for all these years “just minding my own business” and never stepping up to support the community in any way, letting somebody else do the work. That needs to change. I’ll rather be mentally ill than hide in the shadows.

The resurgence in homophobia (amongst other things) is very concerning. Hell, you have people in this very thread that are making homophobic comments openly, attached to their real name and business portfolio. It seems they've stopped even pretending to not be hateful. I can only hope this is a temporary phenomenon.

Yup. The line about the "non serious usage of 'weird'" is another blatant sign of their true intentions. There's no reason to specify that unless you're upset over it because it was used against conservatives.

Zuckerberg, Musk, Thiel, that Vader without a helmet looking Google bro Schmidt? Super fucking weird people. And not in a good way.

"freedom of speech, but only if it's statistically common" is a very strange take.

The new Meta rules have a carve-out that allows allegations of mental illness and abnormality based on gender and sexual orientation, but no other reason.

You’re seemingly making the argument that this is good because those allegations are statistically popular.

If you support freedom of speech, shouldn’t all insults be allowed rather than just those targeted at a specific group?

Unfortunately that is the position of many religious groups (including in the US) and populations in non-Western countries (e.g. Middle East).

Lets give them time to cook. It's likely the team refactoring these rules are mostly the same team that was leading the previous censorship. It's going to take some time to open back up.

You think they sent Zuck out there to talk about half-baked ideas ?

I don't think anyone "sent Zuck out there" - this policy reversal isn't a bottom up decision.

This is a very myopic take on things.

> dictate truth

What about the damage done by the millions of lies that people post on the platform to spread their bigoted agendas? What about how these platforms' algorithms ostensibly promote hatred and shocking material?

Just look at the Rohingya massacre [0] and tell me you're OK with it.

[0] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...

Opting for community notes rather than provably biased fact-checkers is akin to massacre, got it.

That’s a shallow take. Opting for community notes without any fact checking will transform truth from facts to “loudest voice”. So, who can yell louder will be accepted as the flag of truth, which is very dangerous.

Of course, if you like your propaganda well-done, Facebook will be a great place for that.

I've found X's community notes for the most part to be informative and "neutral", they're usually used to add context to posts when people cut the important parts out.

The feature was not bad when it was first introduced, but I don't know how it fares against brigading and more targeted psyops by bigger actors.

Also are we absolutely sure that community notes have immunity from moderators and they're not manipulated in any way?

Community notes are indeed a good feature at first blush, but considering the current climate of "freedom of speech / post-truth / let's move fast and break society norms", it's more dangerous than a group of allegedly biased fact checkers.

It's a way of deregulating the social media platforms to level of utilities which carry whatever passes through them without prejudice, and shifting blame to the people for believing what they read.

The thing they're designing is very ripe for manipulating people en masse.

You're right, it's a shallow take in response to a straw man of my position. Clearly content moderation is a HARD problem and the decision-makers at Facebook know this better than almost anyone. They made a decision that presumably was in their best interest, of which I happen to support.

> They made a decision that presumably was in their best interest

They're making a decision based on political pressure.

How do you know? Occam's razor suggest that the fact checkers did indeed veer too far left of the American public.

From here, Occam’s razor suggest that big companies want to be cozy with the new president, so they can continue getting what they want.

Money doesn’t care about wings.

That new president was elected by most Americans, and had 'get men out of womens sports' as an official part of their platform.

Errm, history is full of bad leaders who were elected by people and by democratic means. I won’t start a list here, but their effects on our world is pretty profound.

So, being elected is by no means an indicator of any sort.

Nobody in this thread is stating that Trump is either good or bad, that is a straw man you have created to argue with.

Being elected is obviously an indicator of the will of the people. The platform that leader was elected on includes items that went against the left leaning of third-party so-called fact checking services. This is easily variable by looking at the platform of the winning party and the policies of the so-called fact checkers.

> Nobody in this thread is stating that Trump is either good or bad

That's true, incl. me.

> that is a straw man you have created to argue with.

Did I said or implied Trump is bad? No. What I said is, being elected is not an indicator of goodness of badness of a leader, and said that there's a large list, without giving any names, because goodness and badness is subjective.

> Being elected is obviously an indicator of the will of the people.

Yes. That part is true, too. People wanted that particular flavor this time, and will decide whether they liked the experience or not.

> The platform that leader was elected on includes items that went against the left leaning of third-party so-called fact checking services.

"So-called" from your perspective, so from that point on your opinions are biased, and there's no point on arguing any further.

Of course you're free to vote for whoever you want, and AFAICS, the person you support has won. Congrats. My only hope is what you get in the end won't be more than what you bargained for.

BTW, on that "getting men out of women's sports" thing, watch this video [0]. In the end, performance is enhanced so much, the gap between genders are closed nevertheless. On the other hand, gender in Olympic games are determined with genetic testing anyway, so your looks doesn't have any effect on whom you compete with.

Maybe we should prevent this in the future, so humans can compete with their true potential, not with "monstrous performances" enabled by designer drugs and doping. So there's a whole forest running when people are looking to the wrong tree.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2op5XG7LGkI

> Did I said or implied Trump is bad

Yes, you wrote history is full of bad leaders. Nobody is discussing whether Trump is good or bad.

> Nobody is discussing whether Trump is good or bad.

Exactly. I said "we'll see", not "Trump is bad".

Precisely, you wrote you will see whether Trump is bad:

> Errm, history is full of bad leaders who were elected by people and by democratic means.

You then wrote that being elected is by no means and indicator. It is not an indication of being good or bad, but rather an indication of the will of people. Which in this case, for the fifth time is that men should be out of women’s spaces.

I don’t think this conversation is working. We have very different ways of engaging in debate.

> You then wrote that being elected is by no means and indicator.

Yes.

> It is not an indication of being good or bad, but rather an indication of the will of people.

I did tell "elected by people and by democratic means", which squarely means "this was the will of the people", so we have no disagreements on that front.

> Which in this case, for the fifth time is that men should be out of women’s spaces.

?

> I don’t think this conversation is working.

That's absolutely correct.

> We have very different ways of engaging in debate.

Yes. I won't argue about that further.

Have a good day.

> Occam's razor

* Trump has explicitly threatened to jail Mark Zuckerberg [1]

* Trump has threatened to use the justice system against his enemies

* Trump's 'best mate' (who's about to get a job in government) owns a rival social network

* Facebook banned Trump over the Jan 6th insurrection

* Trump could use the banning of TikTok as leverage

With all that Occam's Razor tells you that an authoritarian leader is taking over the USA and the oligarchy that are the tech-billionaires are lining up behind him lest they feel his wrath.

These are extremely dangerous times for the US. An authoritarian leader paired with an extreme concentration of power (the tech companies). You have something approaching a turnkey feudal system. With willing participants.

[1] https://news.sky.com/story/donald-trump-threatens-to-impriso...

"Donald Trump threatens to imprison Mark Zuckerburg for 'rest of his life' if 'he does anything illegal' over election"

Lying through omission. The rest isn't worth responding to.

Not sure what anyone here gains from a reductive comment like this. In case it wasn't clear, obviously that's not what I'm saying -- I was curious why you'd be OK with a reduction in fact checking when the platform is a means to such despicable acts.

That's great, what was it you were worried you couldn't say there?

I consume on social platforms, rather than creating. I was growingly aware of the platform's bias on the content I saw and opted out for reality (as close as one can get to it, anyway). The changes this week are a step in the right direction as other viewpoints are more possible, let alone tolerated.

> opted out for reality (as close as one can get to it, anyway)

I'm genuinely curious to know what about reality warrants "as close as one can get to it". In my experience, every time I close the browser and step outside I'm generally convinced that what I'm experiencing is real.

Precisely. As humans, we use our senses to discover what is true and to what degree. When online, there's always a reality distortion machine running; the question is how much distortion is taking place

Depending on the website owners or influences there are always things you cannot freely say. Even here on this forum.

And what is that? Maybe I'm not deep enough into HN to know about this.

Eh, I'm just assuming OP holds views that a lot of people here disagree here with (thus end up getting downvoted), and writes it off as "not allowed to say it" here. That's usually the gist of why people complain about freedom of speech nowadays, regardless of their ideology. Yes, I understand there are billions of exceptions, and I understand how users get banned for "wrong think". But that happens literally everywhere, and all you have to do is to be loud enough to piss of the right people.

Everyone wants to be liked, and search for the venues where they can express their views where they would be a part of majority. Basically the reason why people skew towards echo-chambers, in real and digital life.

> That's usually the gist of why people complain about freedom of speech nowadays

At least in lower-stakes online forums, what really grinds my gears is a lack of transparency, where a site or service doesn't explain the moderation or even hides that any action was taken at all.

One example from yesterday of “what can’t be said”:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42630197

or

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42630067

Or let’s say, it technically can be said, but you get somehow punished (flagged, downvoted, etc) so you learn not to do it anymore. The incentive is simply not there.

There is a logic, the “community” flags to protect their own interests (financial investments, friends working there, etc).

And since the community is from the same group, they defend the same interests.

The more freely we can talk about a topic, the more genuine and thought-provoking interactions it can create (without intentionally hurting the others obviously).

If you filter too much, you get this LinkedIn-bullshit and it makes a message board super boring, as you live in a closed bubble.

Downvotes don't hurt me. They stop being a disincentive when there is no clear reason for them. It's often people just misunderstanding, misinterpreting or misreading comments and the replies keep flowing anyway.

It's not like you get paid for getting upvoted and a making any kind of joke is usually the fastest way to a downvote.

Please enlighten us.

That makes me think of the rejoinder: "It was for States Rights to do what?"

After living in China for 10 years and experiencing true suppression of freedom of speech, the desire of many here in America to silence others in the name of curbing "misinformation" is wild to me. I have no desire to replicate what they have in China here in America. Free speech is a precious thing on this planet. The only acceptable solution to speech one doesn't like or agree with is more free speech. Silencing people that you don't agree with is not something anyone should support.

It's the cult of superficial thought. Hate speech is a small price to pay for the fight against censorship. But there is a not-insignificant amount of people that look at the hate speech, think it should be censored because it's bad, and literally think no further about the potential consequences of censorship.

Yes, lies are bad and dangerous, but censorship is much worse and far more dangerous.

Yeah I think this subject is a lot more nuanced than what people like to admit. We shouldn't allow hate speech and misinformation to flourish, but what constitutes as such is in many cases subjective, and leaving that up to corporate oligarchs, or anybody for that matter, is a scary thought.

Misinformation is why we ended up in Iraq. Misinformation caused January 6th.

As anti-maskers laid dying in their hospital beds they denounced the misinformation they had been fed. Lets not pretend that misinformation is entirely impotent.

And let’s not pretend like the internet hasn’t exploded the reach misinformation.

How about we settle for a middle ground where Americans are allowed free speech on American platforms but let’s not give foreign actors/governments the same freedom?

Best not to confuse the right to "free speech," with others publishing it electronically.

Is this some kind of really meta joke or irony?

> meta joke

Is this some kind of…