Key facts
- Meta announced a policy change in January 2025 to reduce censorship on Facebook and Instagram.
- The policy change allows offensive comments and false claims that do not directly charge specific criminal behavior.
- Critics argue the changes have led to an increase in antisemitic content.
- Meta's internal metrics show a consistent 0.02% prevalence of hateful conduct violations.
- A 79% drop in actions taken against hateful conduct was observed following the policy change.
- Meta prohibited the use of 'Zionists' as a coded term for Jewish people to evade hate speech enforcement.
Meta's decision to reduce content moderation on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, implemented in January 2025, has been criticized for potentially increasing antisemitic and other hate speech. The royal commission into antisemitism heard that the company's new approach, which moves away from proactive tackling of less serious violations and reliance on factcheckers, has allowed content previously deemed offensive or hateful.
Meta's global director of core policy, Benjamin Good, defended the changes, stating they were a necessary trade-off to avoid over-enforcement and the censorship of legitimate content, particularly during times of crisis when communities might be speaking out against atrocities. He cited examples where content condemning terrorist groups like Hamas could be inadvertently removed under stricter policies.
However, counsel assisting the commission, Richard Lancaster, argued that the policy shift was unrealistic and had demonstrably changed how content moderators operated. He pointed to evidence of witnesses being targeted on Facebook after giving testimony and highlighted internal Meta guidance that permitted offensive statements such as 'gay people are sinners' and false claims like 'immigrants are criminals,' provided they did not constitute specific criminal behavior. Meta's internal documents stated it was not their role to police offensiveness.
Despite Meta's reported metric of hateful conduct violations remaining consistently at 0.02% since 2022, Lancaster contended that this figure, in absolute terms, represented a large volume of problematic content given the scale of posts on the platforms. He also noted a significant 79% drop in the amount of hateful conduct Meta took action on following the policy change, questioning if this was solely due to the announced policy shift.
Meta also clarified its stance on the term 'Zionists,' explaining it had prohibited its use as a proxy for Jewish people to spread conspiracy theories about undue control over media and government, based on expert consultation and evidence of its coded use to evade enforcement.