Regarding Meta's Policy Changes

Hello everyone.

As you may have heard, on January 7th, Meta (the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, and Threads) announced a rollback in their policies. The policies in question include the removal of Facebook's fact checking partners, allowing for misinformation and pseudoscience to have free reign over the platform, as well as a mass removal of many community guidelines relating to but not limited to sexism, racism, and the LGBTQ+ community. Some examples of speech that will be allowed when this policy is enacted are:
- Referring to women as "objects"
- Referring to black people as "farm equipment"
- Referring to transgender or non-binary people as "it"
- Calling for gender and sexuality based limitations of military, law enforcement, or teaching jobs
Not to mention this direct quote from the proposed changes on January 7th to the hateful conduct policy:

"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.'"

If you'd like to view the changes to the policy yourself, you can find it at this link: https://transparency.meta.com/policies/community-standards/hateful-conduct/
Make sure to click the tab on the left side that says "Jan 7, 2025" for these changes.

Now, the term "transgenderism" is poorly informed and insulting, similar to other words I won't say here because they're widely referred to as slurs. It implies semantically that being transgender is an ideology or dogma to be upheld. It is not. Transgender people, like the rest of the LGBTQ+ community are a community not because they are following a dogma or a specific leader, but because they must be in order to survive. Without the support of not only each other but allies of the community, they would be even more suppressed than they are today, and that's saying a lot, since many members of the LGBTQ+ community are either driven to suicide or outright murdered to this day, simply for being who they are.

To this day, despite the alleged legalization of gay marriage in the United States back in 2015, right-wing politicians and voters still fight tooth and nail to steal this human right away, with Idaho lawmakers on the same day that this policy change was announced actively and loudly trying to bring their ban of gay marriage to the Supreme Court, in the hopes of getting this human right repealed and returning to the "natural definition of marriage" — inspired by the bible of course. Remind me again what the national religion is?

To me, this looks like an obvious attempt by Mark Zuckerberg to cozy up to Donald Trump ahead of his inauguration in the wake of co-president Elon Musk striking down bills in congress with his influence. This is the world we live in today — a world where the absurdly wealthy can effectively buy their way into positions of power without ever having been elected by the people or even the Electoral College.

With all that said, this is the final straw for me. Trump's inauguration marks the beginning of another 4 years of hard times for the LGBTQ+ community and now more than ever they need allies to step up and not remain quiet on the sidelines. If you at all agree with me about this, I encourage you to get involved with the community. Attend a rally, a march, a protest, or consider donating money to charities such as the Trevor Project, which raises money for suicide prevention of LGBTQ+ youth and to aide those that are displaced due to unwelcoming families. I know that I definitely will be.

Come January 20th, I'll be deleting both my Facebook and Instagram accounts. If you want to keep up with me despite this, there's a few ways you can do so.

Of course, there's always my website, https://www.nylanomel.com/, where you can find my blog posts and my game design portfolio.
You can follow me on Bluesky @nylanomel.bsky.social, where I'm also posting stuff about my game design projects, and hope to be more generally active soon.
Finally, if you're on Discord, you can add me as a friend with my username 'nylanomel'.

Lastly, if you are someone who does not support the LGBTQ+ community, bodily autonomy when it comes to, but not limited to, abortions and gender affirming care, gay marriage, women's rights, separation of church and state, or anything else I talked about in this post, respectfully do not follow me. I do not wish to engage with anyone who cannot agree that these are basic human rights. Additionally, I encourage anyone else who believes in this like I do to also delete your Facebook, Instagram, and Threads accounts.