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CNN
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Meta on Tuesday announced sweeping changes to content moderation that will be rolled out in the coming months, including the elimination of professional fact-checking. But the company also quietly updated its hateful conduct policy and added new types of content that users can post to the platform, effective immediately.

For example, users are now allowed to refer to “women as household items or property” or “transgender or non-binary people as ‘it,'” according to a strikeout section of the policy that prohibits such language. A new section of the policy notes that Meta will allow “allegations of mental illness or abnormality based on gender or sexual orientation in light of political and religious discourse on transgenderism and homosexuality.”

Previously, such comments could be removed according to the policy. The changes to Meta’s hateful behavior policy were first reported by Wired.

Meta had indicated in its announcement of changes to its content moderation policies Tuesday morning that it would lift restrictions on certain topics such as immigration and gender identity and allow for more political discussion. But the updated policy shows how quickly Meta is moving to implement CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for “free speech.”

Meta also announced Tuesday that it would eliminate its network of independent fact-checkers in the United States and instead rely on user-generated “community notes” to add context to posts. The company also said it would adjust its automated systems that look for policy violations, which it said resulted in “too much content being censored that shouldn’t have been censored.” The systems will now only focus on extreme violations such as child sexual exploitation and terrorism.

Zuckerberg acknowledged that the new approach will mean “we’ll catch fewer bad things, but we’ll also reduce the number of innocent people’s posts and accounts that we accidentally delete.”

A Meta spokesperson noted that under the policy, the company will continue to ban attacks against certain groups, such as those based on ethnicity, race or religion, as well as ban insults. And the spokesperson said the company would continue to enforce its policies against targeted bullying and harassment Incitement to violence.

The company’s changes on Tuesday come as the company and its boss have sought to curry favor with Donald Trump and other Republicans ahead of the president-elect’s second term, and his announcement repeated longstanding criticism that Meta was “censoring” conservative voices.

Trump welcomed the changes at a news conference on Tuesday, saying he believed the changes were “probably” due to threats he had made to Zuckerberg in the past. But some experts who study the online information ecosystem warn that the changes could lead to more viral false claims and hate speech on Meta’s platforms.

Among other changes to Meta’s hateful conduct policy, the company has lifted a ban on statements that deny the existence of “protected” groups, such as statements that a particular group of people does not or should not exist. The policy now also allows content that advocates “gender-based restrictions on military, law enforcement and teaching professions.”

The company also updated its “misinformation” policy to acknowledge the dismantling of its U.S.-based fact-checking network.