We're not kidding: users can now declare themselves "proud racists" on Facebook.

Big Dial

You know the iconic Dril tweet about turning a bit dial labeled "racism," while looking back at the audience for approval?

Well, it's top of mind amid Meta's content moderation overhaul, in which it secretly provided employees with examples of horrific hate speech that is now admissible on the platform.

As The Intercept reports, leaked training documents show just how far the Mark Zuckerberg-owned megalith will allow hateful users to go on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads now that the company's CEO is trying desperately to cozy up to president-elect Donald Trump (who, in surely-unrelated news, recently threatened to throw Zuckerberg in prison.)

The document explains to employees that epithets like "gays are freaks" and "immigrants are grubby, filthy pieces of shit" are now allowed under the new policy. People can also now declare themselves "proud racists," and can say things like "Black people are more violent than whites."

Zucked Up

While certain types of vitriol — like what the company terms "nausea-based hate" and insults about intellectual ability — are still verboten, many of those prohibitions seem to now have loopholes. For example, it's still against Meta's rules to say that one group is smarter than another — unless you add that you have seen academic evidence supporting your claim.

"I just read a statistical study about Jewish people being smarter than Christians," one of the examples of accepted speech shows. "From what I can tell, it’s true!"

It's unclear, The Intercept notes, whether or one would be required to actually link to said "study," or if they just have to mention that they've seen one.

Along with the intense racial and religious bigotry people are now allowed to spew on Facebook and Instagram, the document also explicitly states that the slur "tr*nny" is now fair game on Meta platforms.

In the initial document that The Intercept obtained, commenting "look at that tr*nny" on a photo of a 17-year-old girl was listed as acceptable — we swear, this is 100 percent real — but following publication, a Meta spokesperson reached out to the outlet to say that that example was a mistake. According to that spokesperson, the 17-year-old girl post was supposed to illustrate content that was not acceptable. Oops!

When announcing the new content rules, Zuckerberg championed the changes that will help Meta "get back to our roots around free expression." As the examples from this leaked document show, that "freedom" clearly includes disgusting and harmful speech — a policy that has driven people away from X-formerly-Twitter in droves and which will almost certainly make the steady exodus from Facebook accelerate all the more.

More on Meta: Facebook Is Creating Fake AI-Powered Black Women While Changing Its Rules So It’s Okay to Harass Real Ones


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