Jemmy‘It’s Total Chaos Internally at Meta Right Now’: Employees Protest Zuckerberg’s Anti LGBTQ Changes
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www.404media.co/its-total-chaos-internally-at-m…
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Major props to those causing a ruckous internally there. That said, they likely fully expected a backlash and likely didn't care. Anyone who cares can be replaced by another sycophant, at a reduced salary even.
You get what you pay for. They'll be drawing from "the best of the rest" in a dwindling pool.
They pay well enough to get anyone who doesn't care about principles. Plenty people in tech like that.
Get some real nihilists in there.
B-)
They don't need the very best to make profit for a very long time, especially in a friendly regulatory regime. Check IBM for reference.
They own the social media market and have enough capital to acquire any plausible competitor, as have done in the past.
Losing top talent is only a significant price to pay if the firm or its competitors are still building new stuff that affects their bottom line. Meta is happy raking in the social media-ad profits. Google is happy raking in the search-ad profits. They're all busy getting more money out of the markets they've monopolized, not competing.
Nah, with Trump in office, he'll be delighted to hire in H1B slave labor ...
Since when is/will be Trump in office. I only see President Musk.
Zuck fully expects to take advantage of the H1B push President Musk is advocating for.
Man they’re not even doing the dog-whistle thing anymore, huh? Fucking disgusting, I hope he experiences the everlasting warmth of a car fire in the near future.
Maybe we blow up another Tesla.
If they don’t blow themselves up, that is.
or CEO.
More billionaires should become amateur submariners.
Or go on a trip to Mars.
Gee I wonder why he’s suddenly decided to start moving parts of the business to Texas… little Musk-ette over here…
All of this is very likely to kiss the ring of Herr Trump
Not likely, *obviously*.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/12/12/meta-zuckerberg-1-million-trump-inauguraton/76945613007/
Unfortunately it's a very rational choice to cozy up to an incoming fascist dictator.
I am surprised myself, but making progress of not using their products. For example did not buy any gift via Amazon this Christmas.
"Rational"!? No, that's false. Though it might be reasonable for someone who works for a living. But the only thing they are risking is their "high score", nothing else. Literally nothing a billionaire does is rational, and that goes for every single one of them. I feel like we all constantly forget how much $1 billion is. https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ These people have several or hundreds of times that! Don't forget they didn't actually earn it. *Plus*, it's still not enough. They choose to spend their time "working" and influencing governments instead of spending time with family. Power and money, they can never have enough...
Can you imagine your generational line's entire lives being paid for before they're even born *plus* the ability to literally solve suffering in society. Homelessness? Malnourishment? Drought? Hunger? The amount of wealth they sit on could literally solve any problem, anywhere in the world with a signed check and it wouldn't even affect their day-to-day life at all. They just choose not to. I can't imagine it. *That's* what's wrong with billionaires and why they're not rational at all...
For some reason you are conflating "rational" with "moral."
But I'm not. To distill my rambling: it's not rational to feel the need to "cozy up to an incoming fascist dictator." Because billionaires simply don't have needs. Housing, healthcare, education, food, security, it's all paid for, for the next 100 generations. That was my point.
The parts about morality were 100% me ranting...
Who's making the argument that cozying up with a dictator makes the difference between them being able to meet their lowest Mazlow needs?
That's Führer Trump to you, worm!
i prefer to call him herr trump.
The Turd Reich is upon us.
All heil!
I refuse to use Meta, and I block their various URLs in my home. Friends and family complain and give me grief about it. It's astonishing how much of a creep Zuck is, and yet he's got his hooks in deep, and some people are still addicted to his garbage.
LMAO, employees are about to find out why a union would be a good idea. Gotta speedrun growing class consciousness.
Tech bros are too smart for that. They are true libertarians. Totally can get a better deal on their own. /S
we can only hope fb implodes sooner rather than later. I personally know multiple people working there who are very decent human beings who need to pay bills. I just hope their current trajectory will force employee action and paralyze fb long enough to hurt. Unlike other places it's not so simple to just hire a load of IT professionals and have any meaningful results short term, esp. if they have not been ramped up to speed by their colleagues. So it's not impossible, bowever tolerance threshold is kind of high for any action to take place. Wads of cash, unpaid mortgages and all. Employees of big tech are truly living in gold cages...
Lots of evil is done by people who "just need to pay the bills"
With meta on your resume you can easily find employment or freelance.
Tech people have widely applicable and desired skills. Hell they could even move to a non 3rd world country and be better off.
As someone in the tech industry i can say that now is a pretty terrible time to lose your job.
The market was booming during covid but is very dry right now. Many companies have had lots of layoff and the market is saturated with candidates
Yes but at Facebook they make more money, and money speaks louder than morals 🤡 I'm not sorry for the people working at Facebook. They are part of the problem. Facebook didn't just suddenly become evil yesterday.
I recently quit facebook due to rampant russian propaganda, unmoderated communities full of far left or far right (same thing really) bots and constant, rampant scams and ai posts.
It's not that platform has it, any platform with 5 digit userbase has them. It is that FB has used it consistently across all their platforms to drive """""engagement"""".
No, they are not the same thing at all 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
Both wanna solve problems with violence and shit up the internet.
And end up working for a company that's just as shitty but worse pay, or finding less shit companies that don't have the financial resources to employ more people
Tell your friends to quit and find something better if they can get hired there they can get hired anywhere
Protest quitting would require a large amount of people to do it at the same time. If only a few people quit it's a net loss because then the percentage of bad people is higher.
Excuses
Now we're doing headlines like this with tech companies in addition to politicians? These fuckers act with impunity because they can.
For some reason, it appears the unbreakable barrier for humanity is switching the fucking social media site you go to.
What would it take for people to consider not looking at Instagram and Facebook? A feed full of snuff videos?
Facebook is quickly becoming a retirement community, exclusively for me-maws and pepes. It hasn't been the tool for college kids to organize keggers in nearly a decade.
But when alternatives to Facebook crop up - your Instagrams and TikToks and Discords and WhatsApps and Grindrs - they don't last long before being gobbled up by the bigger social media giants or shut down by hostile state regulators.
In the end, everything returns to Facebook, because the big companies can borrow money for free and staple on whatever small firm is seeing a lot of early growth. I give BlueSky another three years, tops, before one of the big social media giants acquires it.
You're thinking of 4chan
I agree, but we should at least have them fork over the cash to buy a new dumpster to enshittify every few years. There's Twitter that people still cling to despite it being a superfund site since at least when Leon bought it.
Make Facebook the next MySpace, make Reddit the next Digg. Make social media sites starve to death from lack of engagement again.
Instagram and TikTok are already big social media giants in their own right.
If TikTok gets gobbled up, it'll be because of the legal proceedings going on in which lawmakers are trying to force TikTok to allow itself to be bought up by some US company. Which is another issue altogether, cause if I start a business, the legality of the US government forcing me to sell my business to someone else, or even to be forced to sell my business to a foreign government or company and not be allowed to possess it, is a whole can of worms.
But outside of WhatsApp being shut down due to security reasons, the majority of those wouldn't qualify as social media sites that would be gobbled up by some other social media giant.
Instagram is, uh, Meta? It was gobbled up just as it was taking off.
Tiktok couldn't be gobbled, and is being beat down by legislators until they sell to US tech firms.
I stand corrected then. You can ignore all my bloviating.
I love this word. TIL it.
I wish, they got rid of all the snuff sites long ago
feel free to be heroes and leak meta's source code before leaving.
That’s a bit like emptying the sewer into the street
Its amazing how quickly these assholes have dropped any sort of facade they were keeping up towards their public image. At best they are doing whatever they think will get them the most money, more realistically they actually support this regressive bullshit. As a non-American I am so pissed at what a good portion of that country has voted for and those that stayed home instead of preventing this.
LOL welcome to corporate America. The only reason they paid lip service to causes like you mention is because it was temporarily a pathway to more profit. Now that Trump is in office (or nearly so, anyway) they have read the room and realized these beliefs are actually a liability now. So, surprise! They dropped em like a rock in the pursuit of more profits. Never never never trust a corporation to do the right thing. They sometimes accidentally do it in the pursuit of profits, but tying your hopes and dreams to a large corporation is a foolish plan. THEY DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOU THEY CARE ABOUT THE MONEY IN YOUR WALLET.
The oligarchs have paid their tithe to king Trump and feel like they are immune to consequences. So far they have been correct.
Yeah, it is absolutely crazy how much the tide has shifted with trump’s reelection. These so-called “woke” companies (it was always performative, but they performed for the more just side) have all turned 180 and dropped to their knees to kiss the ring.
And this is because of the very real feeling that trump will abuse his power and unconstitutionally stay in office. The guardrails seem to have come down, and these fuckers are rushing to get on the fascist’s good side.
That should alarm everyone, so I’ll say it again: these companies are positioning themselves on the side of fascism because they don’t think we can stop them anymore. They are making business decisions that bolster fascists because there’s a fuckin dollar in it.
With the power of these fucking megacorps behind the fascist movement, it’s like sticking a rocket engine on its ass.
Something something 1930's Germany.
They don't *seem to*, they definitely have. Remember that Supreme Court ruling that said the president can break the law?
That's not at all amazing. What's amazing is that a large number of people thought it was a great idea to hand over the power to decide what's true or not to private companies. When they rolled out this "content moderation" used mostly against Trump the political left was beside itself with joy. I remember the taunts of "haha it's a private company, they can publish whatever they want." So incredibly stupid and short sighted.
The "it's a private company lolz" thing was itself a reaction to when Republicans were refusing to make gay wedding cakes, and the loss of the Fairness Doctrine long before that.
I think "thought it was a great idea to hand over the power [...] to private companies" is a misrepresentation. Some moderation was better than no moderation, but obviously "the political left"would have preferred regulation rather than self regulation.
What's the point you're making? That nothing should have been done?
That this was worse than nothing. Time after time we fall for the old "we'll self-regulate trust us" and all it did was delay actual action being taken while a Democrat was in charge, and now we're stuck for at least 4 more years. It was already godawful 4 years ago, 4 years from now the state of public discourse may be beyond repair.
I see your point now and agree
I mean, I feel thats still true. And because it's true, we need to get the f off of it, as a society.
Supposing your team had won, these people would go back to only paying lip service. Better, no doubt, but not a solution. How long did fascists and racists and misogynists lay dormant in US culture before seizing control now?
You need cleansing and systemic change. People need to internalize "no one is free until everyone is free." Fascists and ethno-nationalists need to be afraid and culturally eliminated over generations.
Fascism is enabled by liberalism, and its capitalist ideology, and it's promoted by capitalists when capital is threatened. Capitalism is the underlying force here, and capitalists are behaving in exactly the same way they've done at similar points in history and as described and predicted by leftists.
Yes Democrats losing the vote sucks and we're all paying for it, globally, but their win would have been a delay at best. That doesn't mean winning votes isn't important, but it means that it can't be your one and only political action once every 4 years. It's time to get serious.
i think I've finally reached peak zuckerberg, i don't want to read one more thing about facebook or meta or whatever
Same. Luckily you can add his name to the block list.
Imagine this being your red line. Your totally prepared to work at Facebook, because there's absolutely nothing dodgy about that, but suddenly his transphobia is a problem.
Well, Frances Haugen left a while ago. Some people did go.
And, well, the best time to leave Facebook was to never join. The second best time is now.
It’s ok to let their platform spread misinformation and hatred that affects millions, but it’s not OK when that comes back and bites them in the ass.
It’s not just transphobia in these changes. You are also allowed to say that women should be/are property.
Facebook has a history of facilitating genocide (Indonesia, Myanmar). It’s clear that if it starts in the US, Facebook will be happy to help.
So as long as the genocide is far away, is completely acceptable for its employees to work there?
Nah, it was fucked up then too.
It makes sense that US politics would be the straw that would break the camels back for most Facebook employments - I don’t think your average tech worker is too familiar with the violence organized on Facebook by Hindu nationalists, the crimes against the Rohingya etc… a lot of that was with foreign language content moderation, so I can see people reasonably not knowing.
It is genuinely terrifying though. I’m already living in a fascist state and have gone through hell; I don’t know if I’ll get to survive another term of Trump.
For many, I imagine it's just the straw that broke the camel's back
It is kind of a red line. First theyre going after trans people. Why do you think you hear about it every day now? It gets the hate machine going for people other than our rulers
That first appears to be skipping over a whole lot of people who've been getting fucked for a long time.
If youre not rich youre getting fucked but not actively being demonized by the state(not yet). Well maybe immigrants are up there with them
But what is your mobility as one of its workers? What other social networks can they begin working for realistically in such a small market? Maybe that's the way to fight against Zuckerberg's and Musk's attempts to turn their networks into propaganda tools for the highest bidder, to encourage disgruntled workers to start their own social networks and then go support them as well. I would seriously consider paying for an adequately moderated ActivityPub alternate that truly respected its users, was truly transparent, focuses on high quality content, and prevented brigade agenda pushing.
I don't know if they use activityPub but open source Facebook equivalence do exist.
I know because me and my friend thought we were onto a great idea with "social networks as a protocol" but it turns out that it already existed. For some reason it just doesn't seem to have taken off in the same way that Mastodon has, not that Mastodon itself is that successful (look at its numbers compared to Blue Sky).
He answered the Trump signal, walked in and plop down one mil on the man's desk. Now he's following the Russian handbook for censorship.
There is a vast chasm between not doing a good enough job reining in your sensors and publicly openly declaring hate speech acceptable
Nah Meta is widely regarded as one of the best employers in the world. I'd take 300k/usd year and all of the benefits too. Let's stop pretending that traditional companies are somehow better so you either don't work for any corporation or actually work for one that provides incredibly benefits to you so you have the luxury to give back and steer the ship towards good a little bit.
Personally, I wouldn't but this is the reasoning most employees have when joining Meta.
lolwut
They pay a lot, but everyone knows they're overworked like hell. Meta is a shit-tier employer, but if you're a young masochist then they're worth a few years to pad your accounts.
Same with Apple. They pay a lot and it looks fantastic on your resume. Even though in reality the likelihood is that the job you did was basically the same as it would be in any other company, but Apple prestige is a thing.
Please note - 99% of the time on the internet, when someone says "in the wuuurld" they mean "In this one capitalist hellhole country" so in this case it may be correct
Expanding on to your comment:
“In my very limited experience, in my tiny portion of the world, that I may have never left.”
Unless a person has vast experience and has had deep conversations with thousands of people, we as humans just don’t have the ability to appreciate just how radically different life experiences are for people we share the same block with.
No I understand that they pay very well what I'm saying is it just seemed odd that you would go to work for such a company without knowing that you were essentially walking with the devil.
If you make peace with that then absolutely fine, but it then seems a bit odd to turn around and be suddenly offended by something as if they hadn't already been doing stuff like that all along.
Nice try, Zuckerberg...
I know their longest tenured employee. Ran into them after 20 yrs... Different human. Nothing behind her eyes.
Others that have been there from 5 to 15 yrs..
Boiled frogs at different stages. (Yes, I know the science is debunked for literal frogs.)
What I don't know, living in SV, is a single human that's started a new job with them in the last.. 5? 10? yrs.. at this point it's all younger people who only know a world with Meta. And this is all normal to them.
He is going to be bare ass naked running down the halls screaming for employees to "come at me bro"
He'd probably win ngl.
I'm not glad that someone stood up for the billionaire.
But good for you ?
I aint standing up for him just pointing out hes been trained to fight by professionals. Ohh and hes won competitions for it.
Yeah people drastically underestimate the gulf between randos and anybody who's had even a little decent training.
Better late than never.
“Total Chaos” feels a bit overblown…
Yeah, the only outcome I can see from this is everyone is given a choice to stay and shut up or leave if they disagree with the new direction. Most will chose, the people who stay behind to cause trouble will be removed shortly after and then business will return to normal.
It's probably accurate. Imagine cubicles and desks smoldering in a filthy, smokey heap, copy machines smashed through the windows, sparking electrical conduit dangling from the ceiling. It's likely madness.
I wonder if even one chair has been overturned.
Dogs and cats, living together. Mass hysteria!
Five people interviewed….
“It’s total chaos!!!”
I despise Facebook as much as the next person, but sensationalism hurts more than it helps.
Getting five employee accounts on record is *impressive*.
There is not a zero-risk of retaliation.
"Internal conversations *and* five people interviewed."
Let's be honest. For current employees, it's probably 10-100 times that. If my company did something controversial and then the press asked me for a reaction, I'd say "no comment" like it's my catch phrase. Unless you already have a job lined up (that *can't* be undone by "badmouthing your employer"), no one's being open and truthful.
He knows which way the wind is blowing...
Not just social issues.
It's easier if people quit than you firing them.
So do shit like this so people "protest resign" and fill their positions with H1B's who can't resign because they'd be deported *and* take a fraction of the pay.
Resigning in protest is never a good idea.
Stay, obstruct, make them fire you.
Fuck the wind. Stand tall against the gale of hate
Meta employees suddenly discovering their conscience is a bit rich.
Still, it's good to see there are people there who won't just go along with anything.
You know what would be an effective 'protest'? If employees started deleting important files...
Sorry, I can't tell if you're serious or not.
It's extremely unlikely that facebook has in place a system that allows any lowly engineer to cause such damage alone. No hard drive hosting unique files no one else has, without backups, without security, and so on.
If you're a billion dollar corp that depends on an important recipe to make your product, you're not leaving the only copy of it on front desk with no oversight.
I don't see how deleting files would work as a form of protest. Would probably get you in trouble, though.
Okay, so what are employees doing? The title says "employees protest", by "protest" do they mean "complain but continue to follow orders"? Because that's basically the norm for any job.
Don't know. Article asks for sign-in, but much as I like 404's reporting, I just don't feel like creating one more account right now, so all I got is they're unhappy and talking. Maybe they're talking to people who can do something about it, maybe they'll do more soon—organizing takes time, after all—or maybe they'll do fuck all 'cause that's what we usually do.
I don't think 404 uses a password-based login if that makes a difference.
I personally just consume their crap via RSS like most other things I read.
Wait, isn't their RSS feed only available to subscribers? If not, can you share the link?
Unionize tech and then it can happen.
Well, yeah, if tech workers unionized, maybe they'd have some leverage. Let's hope they get to that before the next absurd move from big tech? Fingers crossed, 143rd time's the charm.
Tell me you've never worked in a tech company without telling me...
you have to introduce errors that are likely to not be spotted right away. Set variables that cause 1/1,000,000 errors on pages or that that move things around over time
I’m sure that meta doesn’t have backups so that makes this an effective form of protest
I guess being an a-hole has always been cheaper than not being one.
Fecesbook is crap. Crap take from a crappy data salesman with nothing but crap to sell. I can't wait until it eats itself from all the bots.
Meta was already enabling genocide in third world countries and countless other things but this is what caused chaos. Those employees have weird priorities, huh?
[edit] reworded slightly on the account of caused controversy
Not sure why you're being down voted, it's a fair point.
https://erinkissane.com/meta-in-myanmar-full-series
In fairness, do we know for certain what happened in Facebook back then? Maybe some employees did protest, maybe they're the same people protesting now, even. Or they quit. Thing is, LGBT issues make engaging articles. Third world suffering? Eh, it depends.
Yet, I agree with the overall point because this is the crux of the matter: on average, one of these simply matters more—one way or another, see transphobes cheering—for people of this subgroup. This is us.
The usual notes apply: good on them for protesting, big media isn't helping, fully ethical employment is like fully ethical consumption.
Not like they're a bunch of committed leftists working there.
Which is more likely to impact a Meta employee personally?
The fact ur so heighly downvoted for saying this. Perfect example of weird priorities.
id say a good 80% of those downvotes are misunderstanding. something about the wording? idk. i thought they were talking about progressive folks getting outraged at first, not meta employees specifically. almost downvoted but caught my misunderstanding in time
Ah yes, the "old news theory"...
-They've done it already, why call them out again? It's old news.
While they escalate and continue to go full-on hate for profit.
i was with you at first but upon rethinking i do think it’s fair to note that there was little to no *internal* uproar in meta over the myanmar and othe situations. of course there was uproar outside meta. when they said “weird priorities” they meant from meta employees specifically—not progressive or leftist voices in general.
hope me describing my train of thoughts helps :)
Meta's anti-LGBT rules are closely knit to their ending the fact-checking: It is science denialism and linked to racism and vaccine skepticism.
Homosexuality and gender identity are not considered mental illnesses, Sex is not a binary, and Race is not connected to intelligence.
Bigots never liked science on these three, and now they use political power to impose their narrative.
Meta never moderated such discourse. Nor reddit nor twitter nor youtube. There was no censorship to end here. What this is, it is a free pass to punch down trans and gay people. It is incitement to violence, and Zuckerberg and Musk must go to the gallows for it.
Don't get me started on the toxic harassment these platforms have allowed against African and Carribean reparation activists, how they have destroyed the lives of feminists, and how they have named all Palestinians terrorists.
At this point race realists and gender essentialists have ensured political and technological control of the narrative.
There is no room for debating sealioning trolls on this one. If they don't understand the social dynamics against gender/sex/minorities at this moment, they are no better than brownshirts.
It is permabans and hooks and jabs all the way, for every single weird freak that backs this deranged hateful shit.
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If you have a problem with it, organize a Facebook union. The only way small voices matter to CEOs are when they speak collectively.
if they weren't already organizing, I bet they are now. CWA has been receiving so many high quality leads for the last 2 years that they literally do not have enough dues-paying members to fund all of those campaigns. They're one of the largest unions in the US already.
Can non members support CWA financially?
I was curious since I'd never considered that, I became a member the old fashioned way. It doesn't look like you can donate directly, but CWA has a merch store full of reasonably priced, union-made clothing that you can buy to support them!
Good to know that there’s still some decent people there.
Anyone 'decent' there is a wage-slave that doesn't have an out. If you can leave meta and don't there's no decency there.
Bye bye losers
I'm excited to see the technical staffing at Facebook under Dana White.
This puzzles me. Why do these Meta employees care for LGBTQ people? How can anyone work for Meta and have a conscience?
Dude I've never had a single job that wasn't for an entity I didn't find morally reprehensible. I don't think most people will ever have a choice in this matter. You have to work to eat.
There is more often than not a choice. Take what job you can get, but that doesn’t mean you need stop looking.
That's by design. We're all wage slaves to the rich to be exploited. Upward mobility is a myth.
Cognitive dissonance.
I think community notes is a better form of moderation. And focusing on stopping the more extreme bad shit instead of thought crimes seems like a good thing too.
who is talking about thought crime?
spreading fake news can be dangerous in a way that results in actual deaths.
"In modern usage, the term "thought crime" is often used metaphorically to describe situations where individuals are penalised or ostracised for holding unapproved or unpopular opinions, or for expressing dissenting views." - dr gpt
Seems to fit pretry perfectly
In the context of trans people, anti trans rhetoric goes away beyond "unapproved" or "unpopular" though. It's straight up non-factual pseudoscience at best. A lot of it is straight up lies and libel/slander. It does real, lasting harm. That's not "thought crime" as you describe.
That exactly fits my definition. My definition says nothing about outcomes or if its true or not my definition is simply about expressing an opinion and you disliking it is proving me right.
Indeed, the whole point of my comment is that your definition is bad because it doesn't take into account if something is true or not. Edit: Or, and this is much MUCH more important, whether the statements in question cause real harm to other people.
I'm not accusing you of thought crime, I'm accusing you of stupidity and you disliking it is proving me right.
thats different from fake news, still
Please define "fake news" and dont say news that isnt true because then u have to decide who chooses what is objective reality.
When a judge decides to convict someone of murder, we all know they might be wrong. The judge is not entitled to decide what objective reality is, he just decides how the judiciary system sees and treats the situation, as someone has to do it.
The same thing should be applied to fake news, which is sharing (dis)information with the false appearance of some verified news piece to influence people into making certain decisions.
Of course, there's a big potential for censorship in how we treat fake news. So this treatment should follow clear objective criteria and be absolutely transparent.
For all the crap on X, the Community Notes I've seen have been actually kinda good. Not that I've seen a lot, because algorithmically sorted public microblogging is still discursive cancer with ideological hepatitis that I mostly try to avoid.
Someone gets triggered by free speech here.
Anyway, wind blows the other way now. Zuck doesn't want to piss against it
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Seriously, this is how the media is spinning this? "Facebook now allows people to post that LGBT people are mentally ill"?
The default behavior of any social media platform is to allow people to say anything they want. That's what social media is for, to allow people to talk to each other. The things it doesn't allow are, and ought to be, exceptions. Facebook has now decided that one of these exceptions will be slightly loosened. I somehow fail to see the big deal in this.
You are an idiot.(*)
(*)See anything wrong with that statement? Think an order of magnitude worse and directed at minorities who already are targeted with hate, and you have the reason why such policies must exist.
I wasn't actually expressing a substantive opinion on whether this policy change of Meta's is a good thing or bad thing. The rules there are as arbitrary as anywhere else on the Internet; this slight shift does not make much of a difference.
But moderation is different from censorship: if you (or I or anyone else) do not want to read people writing about LGBT people being mentally ill, or calling me an idiot (and I certainly don't, most of the time), or literally making any statement at all in the world, then none of us should have to. That doesn't mean people who want to say these things to each other (necessarily) need to be prevented from saying them *to each other*; there are arguments for that too, but it's a different issue.
Let me shorten your wording to make my next question clear:
How does that make sense? I actually don't get what you are trying to say. Are you advocating censorship as in "rules should be global"?
The point of moderation is: If companies make profit providing a social platform, they should be the ones leveraging the effort to keep illegal contents off their platform. Also, it provides a legal path for making them responsible for their contents (if they fail to moderate).
Censorship - leaving all questionable aspects aside - puts the efforts entirely on the censoring party (typically a state entity). And while I am definitely not arguing in favor of censorship, I absolutely object to investing a single tax Euro into censoring (or moderating) privately owned for-profit social media.
Now to your first point:
Please call the stupid incel pieces of shit what they are - Facebook assholes. because fuck them, and they are not entitled to telling us how to call those useless wastes of oxygen. Meta is a word, it has a meaning, and it has nothing to do with the Facebook assholes. Least of all Fuckerberg.
To the point: This policy change is evil as it gets. They explicitly invite hatred targeted against people based on sexual orientation or gender identity. There is no grey area here, this is evil, period. And thanks to the new fascist administration divided states of southern northern america, it will succeed, business wise. But I still get to spit into the face of every person who uses their platform anyways.
Moderation = not showing things to people *who do not want to see these things*. If you are an LGBT person and do not want to ever see people calling you and people like you mentally ill, then hiding those things *from you* is moderation, completely legitimate, an important part of making the platform a more welcoming place. I don't usually want to see people doing that either in my feed (and in fact I don't, because I follow entirely different things on Facebook).
Censorship = not showing things to people *even though they want to see these things*. If a group of people who believe that LGBT people are mentally ill are talking *to each other* about these beliefs, then preventing them from doing so is censorship, it doesn't make the platform a more welcoming place *because the people it would make feel unwelcome weren't seeing it anyway*.
That is what I (and the linked blog post) am trying to say. You may still think censorship is in some cases a good thing, but I think it's important to make the distinction.
That is a very weird explanation / example.
Hiding abuse from the targets but letting the abusers talk freely is a concept by morons for morons. Once could say that people who generalize that "LGBTQ [you forgot a Q there] people are mentally ill" are mentally ill themselves. Anyone thinking that it is okay to make a judgement about a group of people based on their gender identity should probably see a therapist themselves because they are definitely NOT NORMAL.
False, moderation has existed since literally the beginning.
That doesn't contradict what I'm saying ("default behavior"), and also moderation is different from censorship.
ok buddy
The paradox of tolerance is you have to be intolerant to intolerance
Question, and this may not be the perfect place for this, but is it the phrasing that LGBTQ is a mental "illness" that's the problem here, or that it's a mental attribute at all?
I'm an LGBT supporter, so I'm not coming at this from a place of malice, I suppose it's curiosity and ignorance. Don't we basically understand that the way we function as humans is all a part of our brain chemistry, and that certain deviations from the norm cause things like ADD, homosexuality, musical creativity, etc etc?
The word illness seems way too strong, as we as a society have decided we don't have anything against that personal trait/lifestyle/whatever, but as far as natural occurrences goes homosexuality must be considered a mental abnormality, no?
Again I don't want to get caught up in feelings here, because I think people will hear that and take offence to it since no one wants to be "abnormal" but that is the concensus is it not?
Your argument has been used countless times in history for a number of "abnormalities" that turn out to just be differences without distinction.
"Listen, I'm a supporter of red-heads, but don't we basically understand that it's a genetic abnormality? Maybe 'illness' is a bit harsh, but they're just not common enough in society to be considered normal."
It's a genetic superiority I'll have you know, +30 resistance to anaesthetic.
It's not an argument, I'm asking in good faith if my current viewpoint is correct. I'm reading your reworking of my words and I don't actually see a problem with it. Abormality just means a difference with a much lower chance than normal. I think this actually proves what I'm trying to say because I don't think anyone legitimately believes there's anything wrong with people who have read hair.
Again it seems to be the word that's chosen that causes a bad reaction. If I say being a redhead is a genetic deficiency then I'm implying it's a bad or unwanted trait (which it is not) similar to the word "illness". However if I say it's a genetic abnormality, I don't think that has any negative connotations because it is a difference, as you say, but one not seen as often as any other differences.
Again, I can't prove to you that I'm approaching this in good faith, the downvotes seem to say most people think I'm not, but I am just trying to understand if it's the words we're using that people take offense to, or the actual meaning behind them is wrong.
The difference is being labeled "abnormal" by a person you know vs. by society. As a society, we used to beat children who used their left hand to write until they started acting "normal".
The thought itself that left-handedness and right-handedness are different is not harmful. However, when you start labeling one as 'normal' and the other as a 'generic abnormality', you start shifting people's perspectives and suddenly we get a situation where we call left-handed people "Sinister". (The word literally means left-handed. We added the evil connotations afterwards because of the prejudice against left-handed people. We also did the same in reverse for "dexterity".)
You might not see the harm immediately in the small scale, but it's absolutely intended to be a step towards dehumanizing queer people. As others have said as well, homosexuality is incredibly common in nature. Most giraffe sex is gay sex. It's just not taught in school because.. say it with me.. "It's abnormal."
It's really not though. It's just different, and different doesn't mean bad.
I think we're on the same page then, we just have different taste when it comes to using certain words. I can certainly appreciate your slippery slope point where anbnormalities can be twisted by society into being negative. That's a very real thing and you have some good examples. I suppose I'm just disappointed that we as a society are choosing to step around words and not confront the elephant in the room that abnormal things happen all the time and they aren't bad.
I wish we lived in a society where people aren't always looking to paint people in a bad light, where we could speak factually and not take offense to everything. At the end of the day the more I try to explain myself in these comments it appears to be the definition of normal that I'm getting hung up on. When I think "normal" I'm thinking statistically average, this is a fairly probably outcome. Others are thinking of "normal" as in socially accepted, not a big deal.
I think homosexuality in humans is abnormal (statistically) and normal (socially). I'd never heard that most giraffe sex was gay though, so that's interesting. Time to get lost in Wikipedia.
Other animals exhibit homosexuality, we're the only species to exhibit homophobia. That should tell you all you need to know about which behavior is abnormal.
Right, but those other animals do not exhibit homosexuality in high numbers. It's still a small subset as far as I know, making it an abnormality that those animals simply don't care about.
This isn't about homophobia, I've already stated that I'm pro LGBT, it's about the meaning of words and understanding if a lot of the backlash is due to the perception of the words or the meaning of the words. I also agree that illness is a negative word that implies a correction is needed and I do not support it.
Consistently observed behavior in a population subset is not an abnormality.
Fair. It comes down to which definition of abnormal you jump to. Merriam Webster gives two possible definitons:
I always though of it as #1, but this whole thread has taught me that most others see it as #2, so it's not the best word for me to use in this case.
I'm not going to downvote you and assume this is a genuine question. You appear to be aware that calling someone "abnormal" would be considered insulting. If you support the idea that someone having different sexual preferences is their own business, why would you want to use these labels? If one person likes math and the other likes literature, would you call one or the other abnormal? We all deviate from the norm because there is no norm.
Why would abnormal be an insult?
I would consider myself abnormal, it isnt a negative or positive thing
Yes, this is exactly my point. For example, I have ADHD which has some downsides, but a lot of upsides that make me who I am. I'm also partially red-green colorblind. Both of these are abnormalities, and I don't take that as a personal affront.
Now, apart from being the butt of a couple jokes, being colorblind has not been a major hardship for me, so from an emotional level it's not the same as growing up ostracized for being gay. Perhaps that's why I don't perceive my abnormality to be something I would take offence to.
That's really what I'm trying to get down to. Are we trying to say being LGBT is "normal" as in, every child being born has a very high, or just as average a chance of being born LGBT as heterosexual? Because I don't think any facts support that. Or are we saying an LGBT child would be an abnormality that we as a society simply don't care about because we don't attribute large importance to sexual orientation.
This is where I feel that saying homosexuality is a mental abnormality is not actually incorrect, but our connotations of the world abnormal are still such that people attribute negativity towards it.
There are many possible reasons why people might be upset at this change.
For example, loosening the moderation and restrictions like this it empowers people who are coming at this specifically with malice in mind to act with impunity.
That's a complicated question, with a lot of what i would consider reductive phrasing.
"Deviations from the norm" would imply that there is a specific baseline "norm" to point at, when it's much more of a vague idea of what is average, which changes over time and with increased understanding/study.
Grouping ADD, homosexuality and musical creativity together is also a bit of a stretch IMO.
ADD can be classified as a divergence from the very rough average baseline of brain function, but even then it encompasses a wide range of differences and these differences vary from person to person.
This is evidenced by how they diagnose these conditions ( ADD, ASD, Anxiety disorder etc), which is through questionnaires and assessments by professionals.
It's not a
"You tick the 10 ADD boxes so you get the label" kind of thing,
it's more
"You exhibit enough of these wide range symptoms with a large enough difference from the vague baseline that we would put you roughly in to this category"
Opinions on homosexuality being nature vs nurture vs "some other thing" is a whole other giant kettle of fish.
And musical "talent" can have many sources, depending on your definition.
It's commonly used to establish a baseline platform for justifying and normalising bigotry and hatred towards something.
Look up what they used to call "Hysteria" and what that enabled them to justify as "medical procedures".
I'm sure there are people who legitimately think it's some sort of illness but i'd put my money on the majority just being arseholes using it as an excuse.
Depends on if you consider homosexual behaviour as something unnatural.
My personal opinion is that anything we do is "natural" as we are a part of nature, not outside of it.
Putting that argument aside however, there are instances of homosexual behaviour in animals other than humans.
It also heavily depends on your definition of "abnormal", for instance, would you consider left-handedness a mental abnormality ?
They might take offence because words have contextual meaning associated with them.
The strict definition of the word abnormal isn't particularly useful here , it's only when it's given context that it makes sense.
My view is that the word "abnormal" when used in the context of homosexuality has been continually used as a weapon, a way to normalise and justify bigotry.
If you establish up front what it is exactly you mean (for me this would need to include what you mean by "normal"), then you might get more positive responses.
As far as i understand it, no, it is not.
Thank you for taking the time to write such a well thought out comment. I'll try to reply to it but honestly the amount of downvotes I'm getting for trying to understand something is a bit discouraging so I don't think I'll be keeping the conversation going much longer.
I'm making a pretty general statement so I don't have numbers to back anything up, but I would be very surprised if we didn't have basic statistics on how many people identify as gay, or are diagnosed with ADD, etc. So I think we do understand norms, but you're right this always changes with increased research and study.
I did this on purpose. I'm not saying any of these are similar at all, just that they're attributes that might make us unique and as far as I'm aware (since I'm not religious) these are functions of brain chemestry. Somone who has a very creative mind can be encouraged through their upbringing and surroundings to use it for music, arts, etc but I do think think there is something physical in the brain there. I'm not a neuroscientist so I don't know how much is attributed to genetics, hormones, etc.
I agree completely, which is why I say it's not the right word. I am totally against people saying homosexuality is a mental illness because it implies it's something that needs to be corrected. I do see it as something that deviates from the norm, but in a way as harmless and inconsequential as left-handedness.
This is the conclusion I came to in a seperate comment here. That I am coming at the word abnormal from the statisctical point of view, as in it deviates from a known norm. A lower percentage of it happening compared to other outcomes. Other people are using the word abnormal as a way of shunning "the other", which is unfortunate.
I thought I had done a good enough job of establishing upfront what I meant when I said that I was pro LGBT and was coming at this from a point of trying to understand, but I the backlash clearly shows that was not enough. I find it frustrating having to tiptoe around topics like this and always try to explain myself because people are so quick to look for the bad, but I suppose that is the current world we live in. It's a sad fact that there are a lot of people trying to opress anyone who is different, and I can't exect strangers on the internet to know me or what I believe in.
I've done a lot of explaining myself, but I'm still not conviced my original assumption is incorrect. I still think that homosexuality has a biological/mental aspect because gay people say that they were born that way, it's not a choice, it's who they are. I didn't choose to be straight so that makes perfect sense to me. I also know that the people who feel that way are in a minority, therefore something is happening mentally, biologically, I don't know, to a small subset of people making them an abnormality.
What I HAVE learned is I need to be more cautious of using the word abnormal which goes full circle to my question on if this is an issue of language. Most people really don't like words that black and white say they're different, because while it may be true, it can be used by people who do not feel like deviations from the norm are acceptable, and they will attack them for being the "other". This is just a very polarizing topic and can cause people who say they're on the same side to get at each other assuming the worst, which is unfortunate.
Anyway, that's enough rambling from me. Thanks for the reply.
1/2
No problem, i recognise the style of question because it's how i would approach it.
As you correctly noted a few times, this is an emotionally charged topic so a higher than normal amount of people will interpret the question through the lens of their emotions
Even with the best intentions and most detailed prefaces you should still manage your expectations on the types and tone of replies you will get to such a question.
I think of it this way :
- if if think they are misunderstanding the question i am posing then they are not actually attacking me or my position, they are attacking what they think is me or my position.
- Then it's just a case of determining if I'm willing to put forth the effort required to try and bridge that gap, which varies.
- If i think they are approaching in bad faith, that saves me some effort because i can just ignore/block them.
- If i think there is a genuine engagement, that's good, even if they disagree I'm getting the discussion i was looking for.
In more concise wording, people are going to people, don't let them foist their issues on to you, engage when you want, disengage when you don't.
At least that's what works for me.
I do see what you mean, what i was saying is that the understanding of "norm" isn't very clearly defined in these sorts of cases.
Eye colour is relatively easy (within defined colour brackets) you can look at the single item of data and categorise so it's easy to partition the population based on something like that.
With things like mental health diagnoses we can't even reliably agree upon what brackets to apply so it's significantly more difficult to apply the idea of a norm.
in turn that makes the idea of abnormal equally difficult to define.
I agree with them all being functions of brain chemistry.
Though i don't rule out something we'd consider supernatural or spiritual because honestly i don't really know much of anything to be definitively ruling out something like that.
I don't subscribe to them in my daily life, but who knows.
The answer to most of this is "it's complicated" and we're basically using best guesses at this point, these guesses are based on scientific principles, but all that science really is is a semi-concrete method of defining and refining what our best guesses currently are.
What i was trying to convey is that while all of these things could be considered "attributes", in reality it's much more nuanced than it seems, musical talent has many forms, as does ADD and sexual orientation/preference.
Honestly i'd consider most brain stuff to just be unique expressions of an individual, rather than a set of labels, but that isn't very helpful in most circumstances.
2/2
And i don't disagree (aside from the discussion on "norm" as stated above).
That's not necessarily true, people are going to disagree and misunderstand especially on a subject such as this, all you can do is engage in good faith and work with the results of that.
If you want to refine your explanations, that's fine also, but you aren't going to get 100% success rates, especially on the internet.
All we can do is our best, if that's not enough for some people, so be it.
This kind of communication is a skill, it'll get more refined over time.
True, so manage your expectations accordingly.
If you go in to it with an understanding of the potential outcomes you won't be blindsided.
The conversation about a potential biological/genetic component to homosexuality is incredibly charged for various reasons but mainly because of the consequences of either outcome.
If it turns out there is a genetic component then think of all the things the fundamentalist nutjobs would want to do with that information.
And given that fundamentalist nutjobs aren't know for their clear headed and rational thinking they wouldn't understand (or would wilfully ignore) that you probably can't just point to a "gay gene" as a means of identification so not only would they being doing stupid shit, they'd be doing stupid shit that doesn't make any sense.
I think it's more complicated than just language, though language is a major component on the internet.
There are sometimes ways to present the same information in a similar way that makes use of linguistic and societal context to convey the meaning of what you were saying while downplaying some of the the negative aspects of how it could be received.
I suspect an issue you might be having is that at a glance they'd probably both look the same to you, so with a choice between four words and two sentences the more concise seems like the better option.
Though i might be projecting.
I don't actually think that's the issue here however, i agree it's just a charged subject and people are people.
I feel bad writing such a short reply considering all the work you put into yours, but thank you for your understanding and the conversation. You're very well spoken :)
If a requirement to mental abnormality is that its unnatural, wouldnt that also exclude most mental illnesses?
I don't think understand what you are asking, would you mind adding a bit more detail please ?
If the answer to the question "is homosexuality a mental abnormality" depends on if you consider homosexuality natural, that would mean that being unnatural is a condition of a mental abnormality, which, since people are born with mental illnesses and not resulted from human activity, would also exclude mental illnesses
Am i misunderstanding something?
Ah i think i see.
That quote is not from my post, i think you meant to reply to the OP.
Variant is probably a better choice than abnormality, if you're asking genuinely, that is.
Here come the downvotes, which most seem to use based on whether they agree with something or not, rather than for signalling the quality of a comment. It fosters echo chambering rather than healthy discussion. I for one think that this is an excellent question and discussion.
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Ok there i go for the downvotes... Where are woke people there is always confusion about everything, if you dont think or do things like they do they start scream and protest all the time. Thats why they are getting behind, the majority of people (the silent ones) are tired of the constant whining
Why do I hear so much bitching about wokeness from the silent ones? If they want to call themselves the silent ones they should shut the fuck up. I might be interested if they had anything to say beyond the vague 'we're getting behind' and 'everything is confusing' which gives old-man-yells-at-cloud energy.
The word woke has been misused for so many years now its effectively meaningless other than meaning "dumb leftist"
Fuck we are a stupid species....
is me wanting to exist really too "woke" for you?
No, but if you work in a place and dont like the way the company is going, for personal or profissional reasons, just resign and go for another job, stop wasting everyone time and patient
if a company was allowing people to say they want YOU dead, you'd be pretty upset as well.
Just running away from discrimination and oppression doesn't help. I value the well-being of humans WAY before I value your "time and patient"
"value the well-being of humans" that is a subjective thing thats why there is this kind of conflits, just because you think you are defending the world with no cape that doesnt mean you are right and the contraditory is not true as well. What i mean is that they have different views and there are not a good or bad view, they are different, so no you cannot say that you are right and the other is wrong. Just move on
You fuckers are anything but silent.
What does "woke" mean, when you say it? It used to refer to awareness of the existence of institutional racism. Does "anti-woke" refer to a lack of awareness, or a lack of concern? Would you argue that that would be a good thing?
What is "woke" to you? Not using racist slurs?
Silent? I fucking wish you idiots were silent.
We certainly wish you were silent
Pretty sure it's the zios and other fash crying about having their lies revealed.
"Do things the way they do" like accept people's right to exist and be themselves. You're the ones enforcing things on people, your revulsion at seeing a black person isn't equal to that person's suffering under a racist system.
You entitled piece of shit.
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… We are above the fray. It is the they’s and them’s causing all the problem and doing all the complaining. This post isn’t the exact whining I’m talking about I promise. We us’s are just doing the lord’s work and never complaining.
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Uhhh… what are you on about?
Just you whining about doing gods work and being mad at they/thems for existing
False piety. Jesus definitely wouldn’t do your performative bullshit.
Edit: apparently that was sarcasm
OMG! I got the impression people were missing what I thought was obvious, on the nose sarcasm. I was pointing out the initial whinging about “woke” people was hypocritical.
I love this ahahah <3
They had a fun time while it lasted, however such inorganic promotion of hypersexuality had a cost and they'll pay soon.
Tolerating & not suppressing it is tantamount to promotion?
Or what exactly are you talking about?
"Hypersexual" is a term I have heard used by anti-LGBTQ bigots as a pejorative, especially but not exclusively by the religious right. They think that a minority calling out to each other in solidarity or getting special protections equals a hyperfixation upon having sex.
The person above is welcome to tell me I have them all wrong, but based on their other comment in this post, they appear to think queer people on the internet (or maybe just the internet in general) are sex-crazed maniacs.
::: spoiler CW: transphobia
https://lemmy.world/comment/3157331
I think you're right.
I wonder what their thoughts on the unnatural spike in left-handedness are?
It's an absolutely sinister plot by the left wing to make people less right /s
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