Nuts to Zuckerberg

Image by Htc Erl from Pixabay

You probably heard that CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that Meta is dumping its fact-checking program.

You probably didn't hear that Meta's accompanying new guidelines on hate speech allow Facebook and Instagram users to call LGBTQ people mentally ill.

Surprise!

As Zuckerberg and other tech titans rush to prostrate themselves before the incoming presidential weenie, some of us are getting crushed in the unseemly stampede. In his remarks on Tuesday, Zuckerberg cited "recent elections" and "a cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritizing speech."

And hate.

According to NBC News, Meta guidelines now read, "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."

I find myself imagining the Meta employees in Silicon Valley as they crafted that statement. They knew they were serving up dangerous lies in the service of pandering. Did they experience migraines? Ulcers? Frogs, locusts and boils?

I assume the bottom line here is the bottom line:  Meta will make money from bigots and idiots blissfully free to call queer people crazy.

I don't have to tell you that we fought that label for a long time. We thought we were done. Now we have to fight it again. Yet another result of the Trump victory, the gift that keeps on giving.