Meta's chief marketing officer warned that greater censorship on its platforms could "harm speech" from the LGBTQ+ community aiming to push back against hate.
Alex Schultz posted his feelings on Meta's decision to change its policy on hateful conduct earlier this week in a post on its internal forum.
"My perspective is we've done well as a community when the debate has happened and I was shocked with how far we've gone with censorship of the debate," Schultz wrote in the post, seen by Business Insider.
He added that his friends and family were shocked to see him receive abuse as a gay man in the past, but that it helped them to realize hatred exists.
"Most of our progress on rights happened during periods without mass censorship like this and pushing it underground, I think, has coincided with reversals," he said.
"Obviously, I don't like people saying things that I consider awful but I worry that the solution of censoring that doesn't work as well as you might hope. So I don't know the answer, this stuff is really complicated, but I am worried that too much censorship is actually harmful and that's may have been where we ended up."
Earlier this week, the company adjusted its moderation guidelines to allow statements on its platforms claiming that LGBTQ+ people are "mentally ill" and removed trans and nonbinary-themed chat options from its Messenger app, features that had previously been showcased as part of the company's support for Pride Month.
Schultz also said that he does not think that censorship and cancel culture have helped the LGBTQ+ movement.
He wrote, "We don't enforce these things perfectly," and cited an example of a mistake of taking down images of two men kissing and removing a slur word toward gay people rather than a deliberate move by a "bigoted person in operations."
Schultz added, "So the more rules we have, the more mistakes we make…Moderation is hard and we'll always get it wrong somewhat. The more rules, the more censorship, the more we'll harm speech from our own community pushing back on hatred."
The company's latest decision to roll back its DEI programs has sparked intense internal debate and public scrutiny. The announcement, delivered via an internal memo by VP of HR Janelle Gale, said that the company would dismantle its dedicated DEI team and eliminate diversity programs in its hiring process.
The company said Tuesday it will replace third-party fact-checkers on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads with a community notes system, mirroring the approach used on Elon Musk's platform, X.
Schulz told BI in an interview earlier this week that the election of Donald Trump and a broader shift in public sentiment around free speech played significant roles in these decisions.
He acknowledged that internal and external pressures had led Meta to adopt more restrictive policies in recent years, but the company is now taking steps to regain control over its approach to content moderation.
Meta's internal forum, Workplace, saw reactions ranging from anger and disappointment to cautious optimism about the company's direction.
One employee lamented the rollback as "another step backward" for Meta, while others raised concerns about the message it sends to marginalized communities that rely on Meta's platforms.
At Meta's offices in Silicon Valley, Texas, and New York, facilities managers were instructed to remove tampons from men's bathrooms, which the company had provided for nonbinary and transgender employees who use the men's room and may require sanitary products, The New York Times reported on Friday.
Meta didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.
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If you're a current or former Meta employee, contact this reporter from a nonwork device securely on Signal at +1-408-905-9124 or email him at pranavdixit@protonmail.com.
