The American Psychiatric Association vs Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg has told Meta that whether or not being LGBT is a mental illness is up for debate. The American Psychiatric Association disagrees.

Soon after Trump’s inaguration, Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, announced a set of changes to its content moderation policies. Among them was a change that allows users to call LGBT people mentally ill based on their gender identity or sexual orientation.

As a psychiatrist, I was shocked by the news. Every major medical organization, including the American Psychiatric Association, has made it clear that being gay, bi, or trans isn’t a mental illness.

Psychiatrists who study LGBT mental health have repeatedly explained that the mental health difficulties LGBT people experience aren’t from their sexual orientation or gender identity. They are from how other people treat them. Meta just took a huge step to make sure that gets worse.

The company told its users (3 billion on Facebook alone) that bullying LGBT people is acceptable. Roughly 1:3 LGBT kids report being bullied in the past year. And this leads to dramatically elevated rates of suicide attempts. By normalizing bullying, Meta is ensuring that these suicidality rates intensify. And vulnerable kids and their families are going to pay the price.

Meta’s policy change also harkens back to the practice of conversion therapy, in which therapists and secular professionals tried to change people’s gender identity or sexual orientation. Those practices have been consistently linked to suicide attempts. In 2020, the United Nations called for an end to the practice worldwide.

Meta is surely aware that being gay or trans isn’t a mental illness. Headquartered in the Bay Area, the company has countless LGBT employees it relies on to get its work done. Not surprisingly, its employees are taking offense to the policy change. One employee facetiously wrote on an internal company platform that they plan to take a medical leave of absence, given that the company just informed them they are ill.

One needs to ask why Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg initiated this policy change. It should be clear to anyone watching that it was because of Trump. In recent years, the tech industry has been facing the prospect of increased government regulation. Meta’s policy change happened soon after Zuckerburg visited Trump at Mar A Lago and donated a million dollars to his inauguration fund. In a recorded speech announcing Meta’s new content moderation policies, he explicitly said he plans to work with Donald Trump moving forward.

For those paying attention, they can see the social conservative playbook moving forward. Anti-LGBT activists have been clear about their strategy to attack trans people, then move back to gay people once anti-LGBT rhetoric is more mainstream. With this impact on Meta, they’ve achieved that goal.

We’re living in a world of “alternative facts,” in which truth is determined by the loudest voice instead of the most convincing science or data. Trump’s anti-LGBT executive orders have dominated this mainstream media news cycle. Over half of Americans get their news from social media. And the biggest platforms may soon be in the hands of those with anti-LGBT political ideologies. Trump donors Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg own X (formerly Twitter) and Meta respectively. There is talk that Elon Musk may soon own TikTok as well. This small number of people, who have been transparent about their feelings toward LGBT people, may soon be in charge of what most Americans consider to be truth, American Psychiatric Association be damned.