On January 7, 2025, Meta announced sweeping changes to its content moderation policies, including the end of third-party fact-checking in the U.S., and rollbacks to its hate speech policy globally that remove protections for women, people of color, trans people, and more. In the absence of data from Meta, we decided to go straight to users to assess if and how harmful content is manifesting on Meta platforms in the wake of January rollbacks.
That “speech police” traces to the government in the form of labor laws & regulations in the remit of the EEOC, eg, Title 7 of Civil Rights Act, Age Discrimination in Employment Act, Americans with Disabilities Act. Employers didn’t conceive of such workplaces policies on their own to invite lawsuits & put targets on their backs.
These laws do not apply to social media as a communication platform. Offensive expression doesn’t deny equal access/opportunities to platform resources they are under any legal obligation to provide. Should we put much confidence in social media companies voluntarily assuming unnecessary obligations just because?
It never made sense.