It is now okay for LGBTQ+ people to be described as ‘mentally ill’ and ‘freaks’.
The removal of independent fact checkers and moderation by Meta – which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads – recently announced by Mark Zuckerberg, means social media users can call LGBTQ+ folks mentally ill because of their sexuality and gender identity.
On Tuesday (7 January) Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced a raft of changes to the company’s policies. The changes will see Meta no longer moderate “divisive” issues, like immigration and gender, and end its independent fact checking programme by moving to a community notes system similar to what is seen on Elon Musk’s platform, X.
Revised Meta hate speech guidelines following the announcement make it clear that social media users will be able to call LGBTQ+ mentally ill, simply because they are LGBTQ+.
“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’,” the loosened guidelines read.
Also removed is a prohibition on claiming that there is “no such thing” as a trans or gay person, reports The Independent. Another major change in the same section is the removal of rules that users couldn’t call protected groups “freaks” or “abnormal.”
Being LGBTQ+ has long been declassified as a mental illness or disorder. Homosexuality was removed from Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1974 whilst in 2013, in the fifth edition of the DSM, “gender identity disorder” was replaced with “gender dysphoria”.
Similarly, in 2018 the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced it would stop classifying trans people as mentally ill on the simple basis they are trans, explicitly stating that being trans is “not actually a mental health condition.”
