Training materials obtained by @theintercept include specific examples of permitted hate speech that “demonstrate that Meta’s policy changes are political in nature and not intended to simply allow more freedom of expression,” EFF’s @jilliancyork said. https://theintercept.com/2025/01/09/facebook-instagram-meta-hate-speech-content-moderation/
@theintercept @jilliancyork Well this certainly aged like a glass of milk left out in a swamp during the dead of summer:
"We applaud Meta’s efforts to try to fix its over-censorship problem but will watch closely to make sure it is a good-faith effort and rolled out fairly and not merely a political maneuver to accommodate the upcoming U.S. administration change."
- @eff
@aires @theintercept @jilliancyork @eff That was written before EFF learned about hate speech changes; they only knew the earlier FB announcement that did not mention changes to "hateful conduct" policy. They updated their article to reflect that: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/eff-statement-metas-announcement-revisions-its-content-moderation-processes
@elgregor @theintercept @jilliancyork @eff Even if that's true, it's still a laughably naive statement, even from a PR perspective where every single word needs to be chosen carefully. I get that they can't just come out and say "we don't trust Meta," but come on. It was obvious from the get-go that this was politically motivated. While the hate speech changes might not've been obvious upfront, the fact checking changes were, and getting rid of fact checking only benefits very specific groups of people.