It doesn’t matter whether your views are left, right or somewhere in between—the latest news from Meta about changes to their policies directly undermines free speech.
This should deeply concern us all.
Contrary to the company’s talking points, allowing more abuse and normalizing hate speech serves to silence speech and expression, not foster it.
In an already confusing and, in many instances, intentionally disruptive information environment, Meta has shown their words and commitments have very little meaning or integrity. As they announce these changes undoubtedly responding to political winds, they once again abandon public safety in favor of profit, chaos, and control. The company’s decision to rollback protections is so far away from its stated values and commitments to its users—including the parents and families calling for change around the globe—that it’s now deeply deceptive.
Millions of people are using Meta’s platforms in the United States. Hundreds of millions more are using them globally. Many use the platform to spread joy, build community, and share empowering information. Unfortunately, Meta’s recent decisions go directly against its stated mission to “build human connection” and instead prioritize those using the platforms to spread hate, lies and division at the expense of everyone else.
Given the profound global impact Meta’s decisions have on the world—of which many are still recovering from or actively suffering from—the politics of one country should never determine whether freedom of expression and civil and human rights are protected in the online spaces so clearly shaping or destroying democracy.
Online spaces must be designed with public safety and well-being at their core, resilient against political pressures and lapses in corporate leadership. This latest move from Meta is an example of a social media company—fully aware of their power to shape public discourse—disregarding any responsibility to ensure that power is not abused and instead allowing either ego or profit, likely both, to guide decisions that affect billions.
We are particularly alarmed by plans to abandon commitments to diversity and equity, coupled with internal policy changes that undermine protections for marginalized communities. These decisions echo what experts, whistleblowers, and families have raised in hearings on online harm, especially regarding children’s safety: platform design, dictated by internal policies, directly determines our online experience.
To ignore this is knowingly putting everyone in harm’s way and contributing to a global mental health crisis.
Meta’s changes to its ‘Hateful Content Policies’ do not protect free expression but instead foster an environment where abuse and hate speech silence and threaten the voices of whole communities who make up a healthy democracy.
We urge Meta to reconsider and reinstate policies to protect all users. We also call on leaders across industries to uphold their commitments to integrity and public safety in online spaces, and we applaud leaders who refuse to kowtow to bullying.
In response to these harmful setbacks, we continue to act. We proudly support organizations like the Center for Critical Internet Inquiry, Parents Together, 5Rights Foundation, Accountable Tech, HalfTheStory, The Marcy Lab School, and the Responsible Tech Youth Power Fund, who advocate for accountability and fairness online. Building on this commitment, we are making new contributions to those working to help policymakers better understand platform design impacts and partnering with Screen Sanity to expand their curriculum with a safety-by-design module for parents navigating the digital age.
Having worked in this space for the last five years and witnessing the real-world devastation these decisions have, we feel there is no justification for why this industry behaves as if they are exempt from the ethical and moral standards everyone else abides by.
We at The Archewell Foundation remain committed to promoting accountability, safeguarding information integrity, and protecting all communities in the digital age. We hope and expect those enabling Meta’s profits, like advertisers and shareholders, to do the same.
