Comment by brailsafe
1 year ago
Odd that they made that specific exception, but fwiw their changelog diff view is pretty good. Beyond that, it's a bit absurd that religion always gets a pass as though it's as innate as height, country of birth, or skin color.
It's tricky because even though it's a choice in theory - and it is in lots of places - in many others it's effectively not allowed/safe to do that. This may be even the case for a specific family situation in an otherwise free and accepting area. Many kids don't get any choice. So until you can live a fully independent life, you may be born into a religion almost as much as your other traits.
I guess I meant more as a shield for whatever you want to say. The way some bits of the overall policy read was similar to the god hates fags justification, like you get a pass because your religion discriminates against gay people and by telling you to stfu we're infringing on your rights. It's definitely lawful, but that's different than a moderation choice, but I could also have interpreted it incorrectly.
More broadly (and I'm not certain this is relevant in the case of the Meta policy, but might be) if you're going to have a policy with exceptions based on context, I don't think that context should enable carveouts for outwardly directed hateful or malicious content based on the fact a person does or does not have a protected characteristic; the context should provide margin for different interpretations of whether or not the sentiment falls into the hate category, but if it does then you're subject to the same penalty as anyone else.
As in, context should enable the interpretation of rhetoric that may contain slurs or demeaning/dehumanizing language, such that if it's directed at someone in a bigoted/prejudiced/racist manner, that person doesn't get a pass just because of their religion, ethnic background, sexuality etc..