Brazil ‘seriously concerned’ about Meta changes to hate speech policy
BRASILIA – Brazil’s government said on Tuesday it is “seriously concerned” about Meta Platforms’ META.O recently announced changes to its hate speech policy, adding it would hold a public hearing later this week to discuss the topic.
Facebook owner Meta last week reduced curbs on discussions around contentious topics such as immigration, while also scrapping its fact-checking program in the United States.
The move is Meta’s biggest overhaul of its approach to managing political content on its services in recent memory and comes as CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been signalling a desire to mend fences with the incoming Trump administration.
The changes will affect Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, three of the world’s biggest social media platforms with more than 3 billion users globally.
“We’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship. It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression,” Zuckerberg said in a video.
He acknowledged the role of the recent U.S. elections in his thinking, saying they “feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech.”
When asked about the changes at a press conference, Trump welcomed them. “They have come a long way—Meta. The man (Zuckerberg) was very impressive,” he said.
Asked if he thought Zuckerberg was responding to his threats, which have included a pledge to imprison the CEO, Trump said, “probably.”
In place of a formal fact-checking program to address dubious claims posted on Meta’s platforms, Zuckerberg instead plans to implement a system of “community notes” similar to that used on Elon Musk-owned social media platform X.
Meta also will stop proactively scanning for hate speech and other types of rule-breaking, reviewing such posts only in response to user reports, Zuckerberg said. It will focus its automated systems on removing “high-severity violations” like terrorism, child exploitation, scams, and drugs.
