What Meta’s Content Moderation Changes Mean for Censoring Sexual Freedom Online

January 23, 2025

At the start of the new year, Meta made waves when CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced they would be changing their content moderation policies to eliminate censorship on their platforms, Threads, Instagram, and Facebook. Zuckerberg claimed it was time to “get back to their roots of free expression.” The announcement, a five-minute video on Meta’s website, detailed six updates set to roll out across their platforms over the next year.

Reactions to this news have been strong and widely varied. There’s much concern over what these platforms will look like without fact-checking, but others have lauded Zuckerberg for this decision and “commitment” to free speech. Ultimately, we won’t know what impact these changes will have for quite a while. After countless reports of censorship from activists, educators, and content creators over the years, I’m skeptical of Zuckerberg’s promises.

For the past two years, I’ve hosted the Censorship of Sexual Freedom Series at the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, exploring the relationship between censorship and sexual expression. I’ve had conversations with activists, sex workers, sex educators, sex tech founders, sex therapists, abortion rights leaders, trans and non-binary individuals, and free speech experts. Despite strict adherence to Meta’s terms of service, many report experiencing “shadow-banning” or the loss of social media accounts due to repeated so-called “community violations.” Many of my guests have experienced false reporting by users or internal flagging by the platform itself. Woodhull funded research that studied the profound impact of online de-platforming for sex workers in the wake of SESTA/FOSTA, a 2018 law that aimed to end sex trafficking on the Internet by holding platforms responsible for content that promoted trafficking.

Censorship is a problem on Meta’s platforms, period! Meta never publicly acknowledged this, but, in 2023, in response to Europe’s Digital Service Act, they “introduced additional transparency measures and user options as part of our ongoing commitment to meeting our regulatory obligations.” This allowed users on Instagram to understand when their content was “downranked” or removed from suggestions via tools in user insights. Users like Woodhull, who had lost their accounts or experienced a sharp decrease in engagement, could now confirm what they had known all along – their content was censored. With this history of never accepting blame, you can imagine my surprise when Zuckerberg admitted there had been “too many mistakes and too much censorship.”

As a free speech advocate and tireless advocate for sexual freedom – a freedom that includes the ability to express sexuality in a non-explicit and consensual fashion on social media – I’m hopefully optimistic about the announced change while remaining skeptical based on Meta’s track record. Before I get too excited, some things need to be addressed.

First, I’d like to know more about the naming of “gender identity and gender” as topics where restrictions will be removed. Meta, after pressure from journalists, recently admitted to censoring LGBTQ content from teens. Excluding information about LGBTQIA+ issues contributes to a general lack of information, which, in turn, contributes to the ignorance about what’s happening to LGBTQIA+ people in the country where the number of anti-LGBTQIA+, particularly anti-trans, measures introduced and passed in statehouses over the past several years continues to rise. I wonder about what removing the restriction means for LGBTQIA+ people’s safety on Meta’s platforms. Does this mean that hate speech and harmful disinformation about gender identity will multiply and flourish on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads? Perhaps it means there will be less content removal and censorship of content previously caught in Zuckerberg’s “complex” moderation systems. Only time will tell.

My spidey senses tingled when Zuckerberg announced the move of the Trust & Safety and Content Moderation teams to Texas from California because “there is less concern about the bias of our teams.” Texas is hardly a beacon for free expression. According to PEN America, Texas banned 538 books during the 2023 -2024 school year. The state has proposed 15 educational gag orders from 2021- 2024. Texas lawmakers haven’t stopped at schools or libraries. They passed an online age verification measure during the 2023 -24 state legislative session that requires online users to submit government-issued identification to access explicit sites and mandates the Department of Health to post a warning label about the danger of pornography on these sites. (A challenge to the law was heard by the Supreme Court on January 15 ruling is estimated to come out in the coming months) This supposed “danger” has been debunked, by the way. HB 99 was also introduced, which creates civil penalties for people who post “information on how to obtain an abortion-inducing drugs” online.

In light of all this, the move to Texas is a bizarre choice. Unless, of course, the company was trying to pander to the incoming Republican administration by moving to a red state. Zuckerberg could save his company the cost of relocating and stay in California where, if memory serves, First Amendment protections still apply.

I hope this announcement translates to less censorship of sexual expression on the platforms like Zuckerberg promises. Still, this pronouncement feels like a public relations move to score points with the incoming administration. Social media has proved an effective tool for many small businesses and independent workers engaged in education, discussion, and retail from the sexuality sector. It would be nice to have those voices previously silenced by Meta’s “complex systems” be restored to full health in the future. Will they be? We’ll have to wait and see.

One thing is for sure – we’ll be paying attention.