Threats Against Politicians Skyrocketed After Meta Changed Its Speech Rules
Research from the Center for Countering Digital Hate indicates that abusive and racist comments targeting US lawmakers tripled following Meta's policy changes regarding speech enforcement. The study suggests that relaxing content moderation rules has led to a significant increase in violent threats and hate speech on Facebook.
Why it matters
This highlights the ongoing tension between platform content moderation policies and the safety of public figures in the digital age.
Photo-Illustration: WIRED Staff; Getty Images Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Last year, Meta radically overhauled the rules around what content it would allow on its platforms. The company claimed that its own efforts policing speech had gone too far and that it would relax the rules around what speech was allowed. “We have been over-enforcing our rules, limiting legitimate political debate and censoring too much trivial content and subjecting too many people to frustrating enforcement actions,” Joel Kaplan, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, wrote in a blog post at the time.
The report focuses on the negative consequences of deregulation, which is a common framing in tech-critical journalism.
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