Zuckerberg’s Meta Promotes Gender Based Oppression

Original Mark Zuckerberg image: Manuel Orbegozo / Reuters. (altered)

In the weeks preceding Donald Trump’s inauguration, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram), directed the company to institute new policies that actually promote oppression based on gender.

One such change was to Meta’s Hateful Conduct policy. The new policy still includes bans on some forms of discriminatory speech, including calling people mentally ill based on their protected characteristics. However, it contains an explicit exception for gender and sexuality. To quote from the policy, under the section forbidding insults based on mental characteristics:

We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like “weird.”

What this means is that, for Meta, calling people mentally ill is acceptable if the assertion is based on their LGBTQ status or their gender – but not if it is based on any other protected characteristic. This is an explicit attack on LGBTQ people. But it is not the only one that Zuckerberg implemented recently.

Meta has also removed trans and non-binary themes from its Messenger app, and removed tampons from men’s restrooms. These changes cannot be seen as anything other than an intentional attack on Meta’s transgender users and employees.

In the past, Meta has touted its inclusivity, such as by promoting its Pride Month initiatives and its efforts at diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in general. But now that LGBTQ people and others are under attack by Trump’s government, Meta (which donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund) has decided that it would like to appeal to the far right by joining in those attacks.

Zuckerberg also gave an interview with Joe Rogan in which he stated that he wants more “masculine energy” and “aggression” in corporations. It seems that to him the tech industry is not already male-dominated enough; perhaps he feels it is necessary to increase misogyny levels to get back to the “good old days” when tech bros like himself would make websites to rate women’s attractiveness.

Mark Zuckerberg’s recent actions, along with those of other big tech CEOs, show that these super-rich corporate executives are willing to attack marginalized groups of people if they think their companies will get favorable treatment from the far right and allow them to continue to reap their enormous profits.

We need to dismantle this system that gives unprincipled parasites like Zuckerberg so much malign influence over society.

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