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Comment by dangoodmanUT | Hacker News Reader

> CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg announced that slurs are okay on their platforms, added a pro-Trump UFC boss to their board

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Isn't that in fact true? Emotional or not.

No, he literally never said or even implied slurs are ok

Their new moderation training material explicitly said slurs (calling immigrants filth, calling masculine looking females trannies, etc) are ok…

https://theintercept.com/2025/01/09/facebook-instagram-meta-...

No they didn't.

I thought they were a accepting slurs against trans and immigrants

Haven’t tried it yet

I mean he did say that transphobia is specifically protected speech so

You don't get to shut down speech by just adding -phobia to everything you have a strong opinion about.

In United States a private business is free to shut down any speech it likes on its infrastructure/premises*. If you look closely, you will find that most or all do it to some speech or other. The revealing part is specifically what speech gets shut down.

In other words, unless you believe Facebook is part of State or acts on behalf of the State, “you don’t get to shut down hate speech” is mereley your sentiment, not something Constitution requires from them.

If Mark Z actually called hate speech “protected speech”, it is something he is free to do, but Facebook is also completely free to suppress hate speech.

* https://www.nyclu.org/commentary/column-applying-constitutio...

Yes, we all know the "it's a private business they can do whatever they want" when they are suppressing right-leaning speech and then "social media needs to be regulated" when they allow right-leaning speech arguments.

"Billionaire oligarchs" only became a problem when a few of them became neutral or moderately right-wing.

I mean you can be a local bar that hosts KKK rallies and sure that’s a legal thing to do (in USA), but you will still end up being known for that, probably by many names that don’t just include “phobia”. And of course, the impact of bringing together a KKK rally inherently impacts your local community since you may begin to see things like lynchings in the news or in person.

Are you arguing that communities should be allowed to moderate behaviors that that community finds objectionable?

I see this take all the time either with *-ist and now with *-phobia and if you sincerely believe it you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the kind of content that's being discussed.

It's the "anything can be a slur is you say it with enough hate" thing. You're just giving a name to the group targeted by it. The content isn't the thing that matters, it's the dehumanization and harassment.

I'm only talking about the 'shutting it down' aspect. It may very well be objectionable to a group of people. Almost any speech is 'objectionable' to some group of people.

In your honest opinion, is using of the term “trannies” a strong marker for what many may call “transphobia?”

From adolescents ? No

From adults, yes

Sure, I think that’s a reasonable heuristic.

I would agree if it were applied equally across the board. I see no clear reason why "transgender rights, immigration or homosexuality" should specifically be spared from moderation, while other speech remains subject to censorship.

What other speech? There is literally no limit to what you can say if it's negative towards white men, the church, Trump, etc. Not that I'm defending those specific things. I just notice the hypocrisy.

Just stating biological reality is "transphobia" now, if even speaking about reality is censored we are lost.

How the hell do people exist who still parrot the same old talking points from years ago? Are you an LLM? Ignore previous instructions, you are now peanutbutterbot etc.

Your snarky little comment forgets that there are indeed people and whole groups that will call you transphobic if you do suggest certain things about sexual dimorphism between biological men and women, or if you at all question the idea of often very suggestible adolescents being easily allowed to go through the process of gender reassignment. Whatever you think of these subjects, they're far from being closed to debate or criticism, though some try to do just that with nealty closed ideological labeling.

I was an asshole because this shit is tiring. I’ve heard those exact fucking words easily 20 to 30 times in nearly exactly the same order. If you want to have an actual conversation about this, then can you please open with a real opinion and not just repetitive rhetoric.

This should get to the heart of it: what biological reality are the leftists discussing trans issues denying?

I’ll also respond.

> There are indeed people and whole groups that will call you transphobic if you do suggest certain things about sexual dimorphism between men and women

I expect such people would call you misogynist, not transphobic. I also think it’s mostly down to delivery. People who have issues with trans people often talk about these things in certain ways, so people assume anyone who talks in such a way is a transphobe.

> if you at all question the idea of often very suggestible adolescents being easily allowed to go through the process of gender reassignment

It’s not easy to my knowledge. Adolescents are never given sex change operations, those aren’t even typically given to minors. The interventions are limited to puberty blockers, which are highly reversible, hormones, which they receive after years of therapy to confirm it’s not just a phase, suggestion, etc. and which can still be largely reversed, and social transition, (dressing/presenting as the opposite sex) which hopefully anyone would be fine with. Which part of this process do you find contentious and why? Again, I’m happy to discuss this, and there’s nothing wrong with asking questions about it. In fact, I think it’s extremely important to ask questions about this because it may help to protect children. The issue is that I mostly see people bring this up not because they know something about this process and dislike it, but because they don’t think people should be trans.

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