It's hard to believe there was a time when Facebook was a cute little networking website and Instagram was a fun photo-sharing app. Now it's come to this:
Yeah, that may be Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon, but this isn't satire:
Meta's Oversight Board has overruled the company's takedowns of two Instagram posts showing a transgender and non-binary couple with bare chests and covered nipples. One of the images was posted in 2021 and the other last year. In the captions, the couple discussed trans healthcare. The posts noted that one of them planned to undergo gender-affirming surgery to create a flatter chest and that the duo was fundraising to pay for the procedure. ...
The Oversight Board overruled Meta's original takedown decisions. It determined that the removal of the images was not in line with the company's "community standards, values or human rights responsibilities" and that the cases underline core issues with Meta's policies.
Uh huh.
Here's how the Oversight Board itself put it:
This policy is based on a binary view of gender and a distinction between male and female bodies. Such an approach makes it unclear how the rules apply to intersex, non-binary and transgender people, and requires reviewers to make rapid and subjective assessments of sex and gender, which is not practical when moderating content at scale.
The Oversight Board, in other words, thinks human moderators are incapable of making quick "assessments of sex and gender," which is something all of humanity has done ever second of every day for thousands of years.
Male and female bodies are different.
It makes absolute sense to treat them differently.
It's not controversial. It's literally part of our DNA.
So is Meta fighting this cartoonishly ridiculous assessment?
Nope.
"We welcome the board's decision in this case. We had reinstated this content prior to the decision, recognizing that it should not have been taken down," a Meta spokesperson told Engadget. "We are constantly evaluating our policies to help make our platforms safer for everyone. We know more can be done to support the LGBTQ+ community, and that means working with experts and LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations on a range of issues and product improvements."
