Meta’s 'alarming' conduct policy

Meta – the parent company of Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and Threads – dominated the news last week with the announcement by Mark Zuckerberg of drastic changes to its content moderation policies.

While much focus has been on what this means for mis- and dis-information and the potential impact on democracy, less attention has been given to significant changes to Meta’s Hateful Conduct Policy. Changes that permit more hate speech and weaken protections for LGBTQIA+ people and other protected groups, even allowing users to deny the existence of queer people or call for their erasure.

Unleashing hate

As an initial red flag to queer people, codified into the new policy are terms such as “transgenderism”, a right-wing neologism intended to imply that being trans is an ideology, and “homosexuality”, an increasingly outdated term with a clinical history, used to suggest that people attracted to the same sex are somehow diseased or psychologically disordered.

The policy now allows the “use of insulting language in the context of discussing political or religious topics, such as when discussing transgender rights, immigration, or homosexuality”.

Under the guise of “religious beliefs”, Meta now allows arguments for the exclusion of queer people from teaching jobs, law enforcement, and the armed forces.

Prohibitions against statements denying the existence of, or dehumanising, protected groups have been removed. On Meta’s platforms you may now freely refer to women as property or objects, or refer to transgender or non-binary people as “it”. You can claim that queer or transgender people “do not exist”, or that we “shouldn’t exist”, essentially a green light to call for total exclusion or even extermination.

It’s hard to pick the most alarming aspect in all this, but here’s a contender: “We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism [sic] and homosexuality”.

Notably, this new allowance targets only LGBTQIA+ people, who you can now refer to as mentally ill, unnatural, abnormal or worse.

Meta couldn’t be clearer about how little queer people mean to them. 

How to respond?

LGBTQIA+ people are told we are free to leave Meta’s platforms. But for many queer people, social media is a vital way to connect to their community and express themselves. Why should they have to leave these platforms because Meta has decided to re-draw their boundaries of hate, and queer people are no longer in the safety zone?

And this is not just about what happens on Meta’s platforms – this hate will metastasise. These policy changes at one of the world’s most powerful companies, whose brands are some of the most influential in online culture, is a signal of what hate is now considered acceptable in 2025. A signal to those that hate to say that the world is bending to their will.

Consider your platform use

You may think that one person reducing their use of Facebook and Instagram won’t make a difference, but as the climate emergency movement is showing, small actions by millions of people have the potential to create change at a seismic level. Your status as one lone human being or business shouldn’t be an excuse for doing nothing.

As an organisation, Outvertising would urge you to review your use of Meta’s social networks and advertising services. We recommend you read the Conscious Advertising Network’s Hate Speech Manifesto and How To Stop Funding Hate.

As an individual, consider reducing or stopping your use of Meta’s platforms, whilst also protecting yourself if you remain in these spaces. GLAAD has published a digital safety guide and young people’s LGBTQIA+ support group The Trevor Project has published an online safety guide.

At Outvertising, we’re closing our Instagram account and will work with a social monitoring agency to keep a close eye on the impact of the changes.

Consider queer talent

LGBTQIA+ people in your organisation will likely be feeling upset or alarmed by these changes, particularly those working on Meta campaigns, so checking in with them and having a company position is crucial. Imagine working with a supplier that’s signalled it’s OK for people to question your right to exist.

You probably wouldn’t ask your vegan colleagues to work on a new account for an abattoir. 

In case there was room for doubt, on Friday [10 January] Meta announced it was axing its DEI team and terminating their DEI programmes, effective immediately. Similar announcements have also come out of Amazon, McDonald's, Ford, Nissan and Molson Coors. 

We feel for, and stand by, our queer and ally colleagues who work at Meta, and those who work closely with them, now troubled and conflicted. Outvertising is here to help them speak up safely with one very loud voice. That voice needs to be heard.

Consider your investment

The big one, and the one that will make the biggest difference, and the most difficult to address, given the level of dependence that many advertisers and agencies still have on Meta to deliver online reach.

An X-style mass exodus by advertisers is not expected in the short term, which makes you wonder exactly what Meta has to do, what line it must cross, to make our industry reconsider where we’re putting our money. If you don’t like the moral case, there’s always the business case: the latest effectiveness research suggests big brands are spending three times too much on social media anyway.

Outvertising believes that advertisers should base strategic decisions – around media planning, supplier relationships and all other aspects of business activity – on a wider set of factors than just "what’s good for the bottom line". These judgments must factor in the human costs of the way we do our work.

Responsible businesses must critically assess all relationships in their ecosystem and ensure their values are reflected in these interactions, even if it means adjusting or ending partnerships that harm people. No supplier should be "too sticky" to be beyond reproach. 

We ourselves have worked with Meta as it has hosted our annual Outvertising Live conference for the past three years. We rely on sponsorship and patronage to continue to exist, but we cannot work with an organisation that is intentionally making its platforms less safe places for LGBTQIA+ people and other minoritised groups.

In 2023, more than 100 agencies, media owners, industry associations and more agreed to stand firm with our community, pledging to invest in media that matches their values and to divest from media that spreads hate, disinformation and violence.

This is a time to call again on that commitment and courage. Last week was a watershed moment for how we respond to organisations who are taking active steps to make the world less hospitable to LGBTQIA+ people. The time for our industry to walk the talk is now.

Chris Dunne is the chief executive of Outvertising