Meta bosses grilled over decision to cut ‘censorship’ that has potentially unleashed more antisemitic content

Australia’s royal commission into antisemitism and social cohesion has been shown graphs showing a steep drop in how much hateful conduct Meta takes action on. Photograph: Francis Mascarenhas/Reuters View image in fullscreen Australia’s royal commission into antisemitism and social cohesion has been shown graphs showing a steep drop in how much hateful conduct Meta takes action on. Photograph: Francis Mascarenhas/Reuters Meta bosses grilled over decision to cut ‘censorship’ that has potentially unleashed more antisemitic content ‘Over-enforcement poses significant risk to the communities that we try to protect,’ royal commission told A decision aimed at reducing “censorship” on major social media sites including Facebook and Instagram potentially led to greater levels of hate speech, the royal commission into antisemitism has heard. Meta announced in January 2025 , after the re-election of Donald Trump in the US, that it would “reduce censorship”, get rid of factcheckers and only tackle illegal and very serious violations proactively, relying on users to report less serious breaches. Its platforms include Facebook, Instagram and Threads. At the time its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, described it as a “trade-off” . “It means we’re going to catch less bad stuff, but we’ll also reduce the number of innocent people’s posts and accounts that we accidentally take down,” he said. Meta’s global director of core policy, Benjamin Good, told the inquiry on Monday that its processes had improved since the 2025 changes and were focused on removing content that could cause offline harm, such as terrorism threats or child exploitation. But the counsel assisting Richard Lancaster said the inquiry had heard complaints that the changes allowed more antisemitic content and that it was “entirely unrealistic” to think they hadn’t changed how content moderators operated. He also pointed to witnesses to the commission being targeted on Facebook after giving evidence. And he showed the inquiry Meta’s internal “frequently asked questions” advice that said offensive comments such as “gay people are sinners” would be allowed. False claims including “immigrants are criminals” and “white people are all Nazis” are also allowed. Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email “Black people are more violent than whites” is acceptable, according to the advice, but not “black people are all drug dealers” because that is a charge of specific criminal behaviour. “It is not Meta’s role to police offensiveness,” the document states. Good said the “gold standard” was to remove hateful content before it was seen but that risked “over-enforcement” – the censorship of the wrong kind of content – so it was a matter of balancing risks. “For instance, we’ve heard from Jewish communities and others, in times of crisis, that they’ve had content removed when they were actually trying to speak out against atrocities,” he said. skip past newsletter promotion after newsletter promotion Social m