(LifeSiteNews) — The Meta Oversight Board has ruled that two social media posts that “misgendered” gender-dysphoric individuals should remain standing as they do not violate the platform’s Hate Speech policy, in another example of the company’s new efforts to promote viewpoint neutrality.
“In two posts that include videos in which a [so-called] transgender woman is confronted for using a women’s bathroom and a [self-identified] transgender athlete wins a track race, the majority of the Board has upheld Meta’s decisions to leave up the content,” the April 23 statement reads.
It acknowledges that gender-confused males’ “access to women’s bathrooms and participation in sports are the subjects of ongoing public debate that involves various human rights concerns. It is appropriate that a high threshold be required to suppress such speech,” with even “offensive viewpoints protected under international human rights law on freedom of expression.” It found insufficient evidence of “link between restricting these posts and preventing harm to [so-called] transgender people, with neither creating a likely or imminent risk of incitement to violence,” and rejected the notion that the posts “represent bullying or harassment.”
“Despite the intentionally provocative nature of the posts, which misgender [i.e., correctly identify the sex of] identifiable [gender-confused] people in ways many would find offensive, a majority of the Board found they related to matters of public concern and would not incite likely and imminent violence or discrimination,” the board added.
The Daily Wire reports that the verdict most likely concerns a Libs Of TikTok post referring to a “boy who thinks he’s a girl” winning a girls’ 200-meter race in Oregon, and a Facebook post of a video of a confrontation between a cross-dressing “male student who thinks he’s a girl” and an actual girl in a Western Carolina University women’s restroom. Both posts were reported for “Hate Speech and Bullying and Harassment,” but Meta took no action against them.
The tech giant’s handling of the case marks a significant departure from the company’s past notoriety for discriminating against conservative views on Facebook and Instagram.
Last year, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg began to acknowledge and disavow the social network’s compliance with Biden administration requests to censor content challenging establishment COVID-19 narratives, and announced in January that Meta would be taking steps to “dramatically reduce the amount of censorship on our platforms.” The company also abandoned a number of diversity, equity, & inclusion (DEI) policies, including the placement of female hygiene products in male restrooms.
On April 5, Meta laid out its goal to “remove bias” from its Llama 4 artificial intelligence language model, so that it “answers questions, can respond to a variety of different viewpoints without passing judgment, and doesn’t favor some views over others.” This outraged left-wing activists such as LGBT pressure group GLAAD, which condemned Llama 4 for presenting as a legitimate option so-called “conversion therapy” for unwanted homosexual feelings.
