As I watched Mark Zuckerberg announce Meta’s new policies on hate speech and misinformation in a viral video this week, my stomach dropped. As a gay, Jewish state legislator, I’ve been a longtime target of harassment and death threats from extremists. I know firsthand the toxic results of removing protections against misinformation and hate speech. Over the past four years, two people have been convicted of threatening my life online, and I’ve received thousands more threats.
The changes implemented by Elon Musk have made X virtually unusable — spammy, vitriolic, and full of lies and bullying. Now Meta is following the same dangerous path. It’s bad enough to replace professional fact-checkers with fact-checking by popular vote, and to allow insults and hate speech against entire groups of people, as X has done. But Meta went beyond rolling back basics of online civility in its craven attempt to bow lower than any other company for President-elect Donald Trump.
Meta is inviting attacks against LGBTQ people. Several of the hate speech prohibitions the company did retain have specific exceptions that allow for attacks against LGBTQ people and no other group.
The company’s official new policy reads: “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,’” (“Transgenderism” is a word frequently used by right-wing extremists to portray transgender people as some sort of cult.)
In other words, you can’t falsely call someone mentally ill on Instagram and Facebook unless they’re LGBTQ. You can’t call for entire groups of people to be excluded from a space unless they’re LGBTQ. You can’t call someone “it” unless they’re LGBTQ.
Putting a target on LGBTQ people is wrong. It’s a concerning sign of how willing some large companies are to scapegoat minorities in order to gain favor with authoritarian leaders.
The real-world impacts of these policy changes will be enormous. When I was first targeted in 2020, the avalanche of QAnon-fueled death threats and abuse was intense. Many of them came through YouTube, which has limited content moderation. To a lesser extent, the threats came through Facebook and Instagram, which made greater efforts to moderate content.
Back in 2020, I had the best experience on Twitter. At the time, abusive comments were quickly removed, and death threats were swiftly addressed. That intervention made the tone of the platform relatively friendly and professional, letting me engage with constituents, share information, and debate ideas.
Things changed when Elon Musk purchased the platform and let bullying, intimidation, and threatening behavior become the norm. Twitter (now X), fired the team that previously dealt with these issues. Far-right trolls like Libs of TikTok, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Gays Against Groomers began targeting me, and there was no one to stop them. For months, homophobic slogans like “groomer” and “pedo” would overrun the replies on my posts. The slurs were often accompanied by death threats, such as suggesting feeding me to a wood chipper.
These posts also triggered real-world attacks, including bomb threats against my home. Flagging the comments to X did nothing, and people learned that the comment sections on my posts were toxic cesspools. I became depressingly used to the automated X message that an obvious threat of violence didn’t meet the platform’s standard for death threats.
Engagement with everyone but the trolls plummeted.
As a state elected official, I have some resources to deal with this onslaught. But other LGBTQ people do not. Think of the student-athletes who need police protection after right-wing officials accuse them of being transgender (whether or not they’re actually transgender), or the queer school board member who decides to step down rather than deal with threats against her life. Think of transgender people everywhere, who have never before faced so many emboldened bigots threatening them at every turn.
It would be a mistake for all progressives to abandon these platforms because of this policy change. These platforms are inhabited by the very people we most need to reach — we are all worse off when we recede into our own bubbles.
Nevertheless, many people will be forced off Instagram and Facebook to protect their safety and mental health. This is a real loss. Since its inception, the internet has been a haven for LGBTQ people. It’s where many of us built community when we felt most alone, and found families when it felt impossible. Those connections have saved lives.
It’s heartbreaking to see Meta turn its social media platforms into worldwide school playgrounds that all but celebrate bigotry, bullying, and threatening behavior. While the LGBTQ community may be particularly exposed, many other groups — from the Jewish community to immigrants to family members of mass shooting victims — will also face toxic hate. More people will be drawn to more remote corners of the internet where they are able to live openly. Instagram and Facebook will be the poorer for it.
Scott Wiener represents San Francisco and northern San Mateo County in the California State Senate, where he chairs the Senate Budget Committee.