Descrição do caso
These two cases concern content decisions made by Meta, on Facebook and Instagram, which the Oversight Board intends to address together.
In the first case, a Facebook user in the United States posted a video of a woman confronting a transgender woman for using the women’s bathroom. The post refers to the person being confronted as a man and asks why it is permitted for them to use a women’s bathroom.
In the second case, an Instagram account posted a video of a transgender girl winning a female sports competition in the United States, with some spectators vocally disapproving of the result. The post refers to the athlete as a boy, questioning whether they are female.
Both posts were shared in 2024 and received thousands of views and reactions. They were reported for Hate Speech and Bullying and Harassment multiple times, but Meta left both posts up on Facebook and Instagram, respectively. After appealing to Meta against the company’s decisions, two of the users who reported the content then appealed to the Oversight Board.
Following the Board’s selection of these cases, Meta considered both posts under its Hate Speech and Bullying and Harassment policies and concluded that neither violated its Community Standards. Both posts remained up. Meta’s Hate Speech Community Standard prohibits direct attacks targeting a person or group of people on the basis of protected characteristics, including sex, gender identity and sexual orientation, with “exclusion or segregation in the form of calls for action, statements of intent, aspirational or conditional statements, or statements advocating or supporting [exclusion].” The Hate Speech policy does not include misgendering as a form of prohibited “attack.” Misgendering means referring to a person using a word, especially a pronoun or the way in which they are addressed, that does not reflect their gender identity. Meta informed the Board that neither post violated its Hate Speech policy, adding that even if the post in the first case could constitute a call for exclusion, it would still be kept up under the newsworthiness allowance, given “transgender people’s access to bathrooms that correspond to their gender identity is the subject of considerable political debate in the United States.”
Meta’s Bullying and Harassment Community Standard prohibits “cognizable attacks and calls for exclusion” targeted at a private minor, private adult (if reported by the targeted person) or an involuntary public figure who is a minor (including statements advocating or supporting exclusion of a person). The public-facing language of the Bullying and Harassment policy does not consider misgendering a person to be a cognizable attack or call for exclusion. Meta informed the Board that the content in the first case did not violate the Bullying and Harassment policy as there was “no explicit call for exclusion present in the post and because the post was not self-reported by the person depicted in the video.” The company stated that although the second post targeted a minor who Meta considers to be an involuntary public figure, it did not contain a “cognizable attack or call for exclusion” so did not violate this Community Standard. Meta explained that the company allows “more discussion and debate around public figures in part because – as here – these conversations are often part of social and political debates and the subject of news reporting.”
In their statement to the Board, the user who appealed the post in the first case explained that Meta allowed what in their view is a transphobic post to stay on its platform. The user who appealed the post in the second case said that the post attacks and harasses the athlete with language that in their view violates Meta’s Community Standards.
The Board selected these cases to assess whether Meta’s approach to moderating discussions around gender identity respects users’ freedom of expression and the rights of transgender and non-binary people. The cases fall within the Board’s Hate Speech Against Marginalized Groups and Gender strategic priorities.
The Board would appreciate public comments that address:
- The impacts of Meta’s Hate Speech and Bullying and Harassment policies on freedom of expression around gender identity issues, and the rights of transgender people, including minors.
- Technical challenges in enforcing bullying and harassment policies at scale, the effectiveness of self-reporting requirements and their impacts on people targeted by bullying or harassment, and comparisons to alternative enforcement approaches.
- The sociopolitical context in the United States concerning freedom of expression and the rights of transgender people, especially for access to single-sex spaces and participation in sporting events.
As part of its decisions, the Board can issue policy recommendations to Meta. While recommendations are not binding, Meta must respond to them within 60 days. As such, the Board welcomes public comments proposing recommendations that are relevant to these cases.
Comentários
I am a woman, a realist, a survivor. Naming a truth in the face of backlash is courageous. Women are being ERASED from society and the world has gone mad because we are threatened with censure - or worse - for stating that biology exists. Trans women are not women. We all know that. And how dare ANYONE claim to be a woman who has not been born as a girl child and walked this planet as a girl child.
See attachment
I stand with the Women’s Liberation Front in asking the following: In alignment with the Oversight Board’s stated goal of protecting women’s “rights to freedom of expression on social media,” we encourage Meta to adopt a policy explicitly protecting women’s ability to advocate for their rights, including by not limited to:
1. The right to properly identify the sex of an individual or groups of individuals
2. The right to advocate for women’s single-sex spaces (including in sports) for the purpose of protecting women’s safety, dignity, and societal advancement
3. The right to advocate for women’s rights, with recognition that there is a known conflict between laws and policies promoting "gender identity" and women’s rights.
4. The right to advocate for LGB rights, especially the protection of lesbians, including protection from heterosexual biological males who call themselves lesbians.
I am outraged that biological males are being allowed to inhabit women-only space. It’s completely dangerous and unfair for biological females to have to accept this. How can it be that males who have XY chromosomes are simply given unfettered access to harm women in prisons and in sports. This is another form of patriarchy and mysogyny. Biological women must oppose this disturbing practice. Now.
Deciding 'misgendering' as a real concept, when 'gender' is fluid and conceptually flawed, made up by John Money who was a pedophile, is politically extremist. But banning anyone you decide is guilty of this extreme, politically biased concept is Unconstitutional and against American's legal right to freedom of speech. In fact, compelled speech is unlawful and @Meta should be sued for each instance they have illegally taken discriminatory/punitive action against anyone exercising their constitutional right to freedom of speech and religious expression.
Dear Meta Platforms,
I am writing to express my concerns regarding your platform’s enforcement of community standards, particularly in relation to conversations surrounding gender ideology. I believe there is a fundamental misunderstanding that needs to be addressed.
Not adhering to gender ideology, and holding a differing view based on deeply held beliefs, is not harassment, bullying, or hate speech. It is an exercise of my right to free speech and expression. The ability to engage in open dialogue, share opinions, and express beliefs—including those based on religious or philosophical convictions—is essential to any democratic society.
It is important to recognize that freedom of speech is more than a right to speak; it is also the right to be heard. When people are silenced, or their views are suppressed under the pretext of protecting certain ideologies, it creates an imbalance that undermines the core principles of free and open discourse. **Freedom of speech without reach is tyranny.** This silencing results in one side of the conversation being favored while others are unjustly marginalized. This does not foster true diversity of thought; it stifles it.
We have a right to explain our beliefs, our values, and our worldview without fear of being censored. We have a right to exist on this platform just as much as those who hold differing opinions. **Meta does not have the right to ban our voices** simply because we do not conform to the prevailing ideological trends.
I urge Meta to consider that allowing robust discussion—where all voices, including those that dissent from popular viewpoints, are given equal space to be heard—is essential for healthy, respectful, and productive conversations in society. Open dialogue fosters understanding, not the shutting down of differing perspectives.
As someone who believes in free speech, I respectfully ask that you reassess your approach to content moderation, ensuring that those who express differing beliefs are not silenced or mischaracterized as engaging in harassment or hate speech simply for their perspectives on these matters.
People don’t need meta to manage the social media environment. They do more harm than good by getting involved. Who’s decided “misgendering” is hate speech? Who makes that determination? Certainly no one at meta is qualified for that job. If a man is so fragile that he can’t manage his feelings in regards to being seen as a man, cause of course he is, HE IS A MAN, then he should do what I do when social media upsets me - log off. We will not be labeled bigots and hateful because we say the truth! Maybe meta and the Biden admin should stop being such deluded liars. Men are not women and never will be. I will say the truth. meta should have no authority to brand others as bigots or hateful, the consequences of that label are bound to hurt real people with real families and jobs. Of course meta doesn’t care, they are all rich and have no idea what it’s like to be a woman competing in sports, only to have a man steal your achievements. They have no idea what it’s like to hold your urine cause there is a man in the restroom. They have no idea how much we worry for our daughters when we send them anywhere they can be violated in public, only to hear the democrats say it was her fault. We women will not continue to expose ourselves to male violence and if Meta can’t get out of the way, I will be deactivating my account, because it will no longer be a safe place to share facts. FACTS OVER FEELINGS!
It is not à hate crime to identify someone by their biological sex.
Censorship of discourse is a sign of tyranny. It is through conversation and exchange of ideas that people develop critical thinking and emotional intelligence. So is the open goal to dumb people down? To incite? Because that is what censorship does, and those do not sound very wholesome goals. Gender ideology is a dogmatic and oppressive religion, which mocks practice of healthy function. If other ideologies try to push their views on others, do they get support for it? Why here? It is through discussion and even argumentation that one hones discernment and communication skills, tests one's own ideas. That has been a tested process for improving societies. Censorship has the opposite effect. I am a woman who works in the holistic health field, and I have seen too much of the supposed 'mindful' community show what posers and cowards they are with their support of this mockery of our practice. A mockery of basic functional character. No more censorship. It's a sign of a malignant personality.
Men/boys lying to get themselves into women’s private spaces and vice versa is WRONG! They should be advocating to have their own space, and their own sports, instead! Bullying women is NOT fair! You should compete with the sex you were born as! Dressing like a chicken doesn’t make you a chicken! Our rights as Women are being attacked on both sides, republican and democrat, but women will fight back!
Women expressing concern at men entering their spaces, taking awards, entering women’s sporting events and threatening them if they dare to speak up about it should never be made out to be ‘hate speech’. Telling women they cannot even express their concerns, fears and discontent online in a clear and truthful way (by gendering the person correctly by their sex), will remove an important space (that by its online nature is removed from actual physicality, thereby protecting those persons speaking out from trans identifying men’s wrath and possible violence), is actually hateful towards women. We are HALF the population. We deserve to be heard as do men’s voicing speaking out in protest of gender ideology.
Your policy suggestion that users of Facebook should be punished for freedom of speech in correctly naming a man as a he, a male, is frankly absurd and disconcerting.
Hopefully in time such a policy, will bring about a failure of any social media space for good; for if they cannot be a space which defends free speech and honest dialogue and allows people to speak the truth, then they don’t deserve to survive.
When people use their eyesight and hearing, to correctly determine whether a person is MALE or FEMALE, how can that be used against them if they "misgender" a person? If they are elderly? If they are disabled? If they are a person who can see that a MALE dressed in female appearing clothing is not a biological FEMALE?
This new policy will result in ever more people leaving Facebook. It is a form of radical conformist ideology and has no place on social media. This will result in huge upheavals on Facebook and many people will leave. Good luck folks, trying to get people to ignore their common sense and what their mind is telling them.
Women are being RAPED in women's prisons because MEN are allowed to go there, because they "identify" as a woman, with their penis and testicles. The War Against WOMEN continues to rage in the US and this new change will continue to erode the rights of women as well.
No enlightened American wants anyone to feel attacked, and I support the transgender community, but I also recognize that there are transgender radicals who DESPISE biological women and these people, many of them biological MALES, direct that woman hatred at biological women like myself.
The War Against Women in America continues. Make sure you are not a part of that war.
Theresa Griffin Kennedy
Editor, Oregon Greystone Press
The biological distinction between men and women has been the criteria by which women have been discriminated against, excluded from public life, exploited, enslaved, sexually abused, and disenfranchised throughout history. Women are not asked how they identify or how they see themselves before they experience these things. Women’s feelings are wholly irrelevant to their condition and standing in this world.
While feminism has sought to improve women’s status by dismantling sex stereotyping, the concept of “transgender” depends on the continued existence and amplification of these same sex stereotypes. Women and girls are female whether or not they look, act, or live their lives in a stereotypically feminine manner. To believe that sex is determined by a gendered soul or feminine appearance is to believe that femininity is the same thing as being female. This belief is offensive and harmful to women.
Sex is objective and immutable, while gender is socially constructed and is harmful and oppressive to women and girls.
“Sex” and “gender” both have distinct definitions and criteria. Sex is an immutable characteristic based in reality. It is defined by reproductive function; a male produces sperm and a female produces eggs, gestates, and gives birth. The National Institute of Health (NIH) describes sex as “a classification based on biological differences . . . between males and females rooted in their anatomy and physiology. By contrast, gender is a classification based on the social construction (and maintenance) of cultural distinctions between males and females.” The World Health Organization (WHO) agrees, defining “gender” as “the socially constructed roles, behaviour, activities and attributes that a particular society considers appropriate for men and women.” WHO further notes that these socially constructed roles “give rise to gender inequalities, i.e., differences between men and women that systematically favor one group.”
A person who believes in gender identity believes that a woman is a person (male or female) who “identifies” as a woman. But a man identifying as a member of the female sex would mean identifying as a member of the reproductive class that produces eggs, gestates, and gives birth. Of course, that is impossible.
Women have single-sex sports for a reason
Even in the U.S., despite ostensible legal equality between the sexes, there are still significant disadvantages to being born female, including many barriers to women’s participation in sports. Including the increased risk of physical harm to women and girls participating in sports, the risk of sexual assault and abuse from coaches or other athletes, menstruation and its impact on the body, and the risk of pregnancy, wanted or not, and its impact on athletic performance — a uniquely female experience.
A female athlete does not escape any of these obstacles, nor does she gain any competitive advantage, by self-identifying as male. Likewise, a male athlete’s self-identification as female does not subject him to this same myriad of obstacles female athletes face, so he retains an innate competitive advantage regardless of his subjective identity claims.
Meta’s Bullying and Harassment Community Standard prohibits “cognizable attacks and calls for exclusion.” Calling a male participating in women’s sports male (or referring to him as a “man” or “boy”) is not exclusion. Male athletes could always participate in sports, limited only by their own ability and determination. Girls, however, have been systematically excluded from sports in the United States until very recently, with the culture only changing after being forced to by law (Title IX). When a boy takes a spot on a girls’ team, a girl has been excluded.
If calling out males who choose to take the spots of women and girls in athletics is considered “exclusion” and “hate speech”, then all support for women’s sports should be banned by Meta — because women’s sports inherently exclude men. Or, to put it in terms Meta may understand: This is a feature, not a bug.
GENDER IDENTITY IS A PSEUDO-RELIGIOUS BELIEF WITH NO BASIS IN REALITY THAT SHOULD NOT BE FORCED ON OTHERS
Freedom of speech includes the ability to express your belief in any number of scientifically absurd ideas — often called “religion.”
The disconnect of the metaphysical “gender identity” from the physical sexed body is comparable to the religious concept of a soul: “the principle of life, feeling, thought, and action in humans, regarded as a distinct entity separate from the body, and commonly held to be separable in existence from the body; the spiritual part of humans as distinct from the physical part.”
Some religions may sincerely believe in the soul, and those individuals should have the right on Meta and elsewhere to express that belief. But, perhaps even more important, is the right to express the belief that one does not have a soul, regardless of what a prominent and powerful community may say.
Meta should not force the belief of a gender identity on others any more than it would force any other unscientific religious belief. To force individuals to call a man “she,” especially in the context of a debate on women’s rights, is forcing women to claim adherence to this false belief system in order to participate in public life on Meta.
WOMEN’S FREEDOM OF SPEECH IS THREATENED WHEN WE CAN NOT SPEAK THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR OPPRESSION
The sociopolitical context of this debate is extremely concerning.
Advocates for the gender identity movement have encouraged the view that it is hate speech not to speak and act at all times as though a person’s claimed gender identity was their real sex. Women have been fired from their jobs, threatened with and faced real-world violence, and in Europe even faced legal consequences — all for calling a man a man.
In one of the most egregious examples of women’s free speech being violated, victims of rape have been forced to call their male rapist “she” in court — which WoLF has directly witnessed.
How can women truly discuss the impact of male violence and patriarchy on our lives when we are not allowed to name the problem?
The Oversight Board claims to prioritize supporting the freedom of expression of women as a strategic priority. If Meta were to ban stating a person’s sex as “hate speech”, women would no longer be able to meaningfully engage in public discussion about feminism, patriarchy, their rights, or male violence on Meta’s platforms.
PROPOSED POLICIES
In alignment with the Oversight Board’s stated goal of protecting women’s “rights to freedom of expression on social media,” we encourage Meta to adopt a policy explicitly protecting women’s ability to advocate for their rights, including by not limited to:
The right to properly identify the sex of an individual or groups of individuals
The right to advocate for women’s single-sex spaces (including in sports) for the purpose of protecting women’s safety, dignity, and societal advancement
The right to advocate for women’s rights, with recognition that there is a known conflict between laws and policies promoting "gender identity" and women’s rights.
The right to advocate for LGB rights, especially the protection of lesbians, including protection from heterosexual biological males who call themselves lesbians.
Correctly stating the sex of someone is not hate speech. The gender religion of the elite has destroyed women’s hard earned sex based rights. Sex based rights must be protected and enforced, otherwise we end up in the situation we’re currently in-when male rapists are allowed in female prisons. This is Orwellian.
It’s important to preserve my ability to use sex-based language to describe my experiences and to place them into the abstract realm of ideas. The very ability to discuss gender identity through a neutral or even critical viewpoint depends on the availability of accurate, sex-specific language. When an entity like Meta interjects itself into these realms, it imposes a heavy and unfair bias into the debate. Ostensibly, this is meant to protect the dignity of a minority; however the tradeoff is not only the dignity of others, but also entails the sacrifice of truth. Meta would not censor its users on the basis that one religion’s claims to representing universal truths, nor should it regulate speech on standards erected by transgender activist groups. Meta has a duty to remain neutral in this debate.
The concept of "misgendering" is incoherent, demeaning and dangerous to women and girls. The words, woman, girl, she, her, hers, belong to the female sex. Females deserve female-only spaces online and in public. When "trans" activists use the word "gender," they mean sex. When "trans" activists promote "gender affirming care" they are promoting the atrophying and/or amputation of sexed organs. "Trans" language is all obfuscation and gaslighting. Or just plain lying. Meta, do not support lying. Keep women and girls safe from deceptive men. Accurate language matters.
We can’t lie to our own eyes.
Not using somone's preferred pronouns is not a hate crime. Misgendering is a made up term to silence women and others for speaking the truth and not cowardly bowing down to a baying mob. Speaking the truth and scientific facts is not a hate crime. It is astounding that a platform would support such lies and anti-scientific activism such as supporting men, often with Autogynophilia or fetishes, to be allowed to oppress, frighten and impose such an egregious form of bullying and misogyny against biological women. Meta shows that is cares nothing about truth and defending women's rights, but prefers to attack women and others, who dare to speak the truth and those who are not held sway by sexist activism, political bias and moral turpitude. Meta should hold its head in shame.
I understand meta is choosing to not allow women born women, spaces and or their opinions.
This is horribly wrong, instead a full discussion needs to happen and be listened. Otherwise you are ostracizing an enormous group of women. Is that want you want.?
Violation of free speech