Latest news with #ChayaRaichik
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Oklahoma's Trump-Loving, Bible-Thumping Superintendent Faces Porn Probe
An investigation is underway in Oklahoma after a television screen in the MAGA state school superintendent's office reportedly showed a video of nude women during an executive session of the State Board of Education on Thursday. The images reportedly appeared on a screen in the office of Ryan Walters, Oklahoma's far-right Superintendent of Public Instruction. Walters previously told schools to teach the Bible and Ten Commandments, demanded students watch him pray for Donald Trump, and named transphobe Chaya Raichik to a state education committee. He also tried to use state money to purchase bibles for classrooms that matched the specifics of those marketed by the president and his family. As you might expect, Walters has led a crusade against 'pornography' in school libraries. Two members of the Oklahoma board of education said they were shocked at what they saw on the screen on Thursday. 'I was like, 'Those are naked women,'' board member Becky Carson told The Oklahoman. 'And then I was like, 'No, wait a minute. Those aren't naked, surely those aren't naked women. Something is playing a trick on my eye. Maybe they just have on tan body suits. … This is just really bizarre.'' 'I saw them just walking across the screen, and I'm like, 'no.' I'm sorry I even have to use this language, but I'm like, 'Those are her nipples.' And then I'm like, 'That's pubic hair.' What in the world am I watching? I didn't watch a second longer.' Carson told Walters to turn the video off. 'I was so disturbed by it, that I was like — very loudly and boastfully, like I was a parent or a teacher — I said, 'What is on your TV? What am I watching?' He was like, 'What? What are you talking about?' He stood up and saw it. He made acknowledgment that he saw it,' Carson said, according to NonDoc Media, an Oklahoma news website. 'And I said, 'Turn it off. Now.' And he was like, 'What is this? What is this?' So he acknowledged it was inappropriate just by those words. And he was like, 'I can't get it to turn off. I can't figure out how to turn it off.' And I said, 'Get it turned off.' So he finally got it turned off, and that was the end of it. He didn't address it. He didn't apologize. Nothing was said.' Carson and board member Ryan Deatherage said the video looked 'retro' and did not involve sexual intercourse. 'I don't know if he turned it off or switched the channel, I don't remember,' Deatherage told NonDoc. 'I was surprised that when he came back to the table, he was not apologetic. I didn't ever hear an apology for that being on, and he didn't seem to be fazed that it was on.' Republican state Senate President Pro Tempore Lonnie Paxton told Oklahoma Voice that the Office of Management and Enterprise Services is carrying out an investigation into the incident. 'This is a bizarre and troubling situation that raises serious questions about the events and what took place during yesterday's executive session at the Oklahoma State Board of Education meeting,' Paxton said in a statement. 'The accounts made public by board members paint a strange, unsettling scene that demands clarity and transparency.' Walters said the claims were a distraction. 'Some of these board members are blatantly dishonest and cannot hide their political agenda,' Walters told KOKH Fox 25. 'It is disappointing that they are more interested in creating distractions than getting work done for Oklahoma families.' Walters' communications director, Quinton Hitchcock, called the story a 'junk tabloid lie,' according to NonDoc. 'Regardless of if recent allegations are true, Oklahomans are in dire need of new leadership at the Oklahoma State Department of Education,' Oklahoma House Democratic Leader Cyndi Munson told KOKH Fox 25. 'These are serious allegations made by two members of the State Board and an expeditious third-party review is warranted,' Republican House Speaker Kyle Hilbert said in a statement. 'I urge the State Superintendent to unlock and turn over all relevant devices and fully cooperate with an investigation.' 'If no wrongdoing occurred, a prompt and transparent review should quickly clear his name,' he added. Last year, the Oklahoma State Department of Education's Library Media Advisory Committee — which includes Raichik, who runs the anti-trans Libs of TikTok social media account — attempted to ban The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls from Edmond high school libraries. The committee argued that the books are 'pornographic.' 'Edmond Public Schools not only allows kids to access porn in schools, they are doubling down to keep pornography on the bookshelves,' Walters said in a statement. 'Parents and kids should have the confidence of going to schools to learn. Instead of focusing on education, EPS has chosen to peddle porn and is leading the charge to undermine parents in Oklahoma.' The case went to the Oklahoma Supreme Court, which sided with Edmond Public Schools and allowed the books to remain on library shelves. The list goes on. In 2023, Walters reportedly emailed some Oklahoma lawmakers pornographic images, claiming they were available in schools. 'Don't just send me a bunch of graphic, sexually explicit photos without where it came from, or what did they do? That's kind of the problem I got with it,' state Rep. Mark McBride (R) told the local Fox outlet. More from Rolling Stone GOP Sen. Refuses to Admit Bush, Not Obama, Was President During Epstein's Plea Deal Trump Is Trying to Hide the Cost of Renovating His New Air Force One Supreme Court Lets Trump Enact His Authoritarian Agenda on Its 'Shadow Docket' Best of Rolling Stone The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence Solve the daily Crossword
NZ Herald
24-04-2025
- Politics
- NZ Herald
Anti-trans posts pass muster under Meta's new hate-speech rules
Both posts came to the Oversight Board's attention after being reshared by conservative activist Chaya Raichik, who operates several controversial social media accounts known as Libs of TikTok, according to four people familiar with the matter. Raichik's social media accounts have become a fixture in American politics, and she has amassed an audience of millions while routinely attacking the cultural acceptance of trans people. Libs of TikTok has been blamed for sparking threats at hospitals and encouraging restrictions on LGBTQ+ -related content in schools. Raichik said the allegations about hospitals are false. The Oversight Board's ruling is the first major test of Meta's latest efforts to rebrand itself for a MAGA-dominated Washington. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg pledged in January to take the company back to its roots by 'restoring free expression' after years of what he said were too many restrictions on speech. That same month, Meta weakened its hate-speech rules, offering users greater freedom to call for gender-based restrictions in bathrooms, sports and specific schools, and to characterise gay people as mentally ill. The Oversight Board as a whole said the posts didn't violate Meta's new or old hate-speech rules because they did not directly attack people based on their gender identity. A minority on the board argued that the posts would have violated Meta's old hate-speech rules before the changes in January. The board on Wednesday also issued a broader critique of Meta's latest policy changes, including calling on the social media giant to improve how it enforces violations of its bullying and harassment rules. The Oversight Board planned to release the gender identity case ruling, among several others, next week but moved up the announcement to Wednesday after a Washington Post reporter requested comment this week on the pending ruling. Ayobami Olugbemiga, a spokesperson for the Oversight Board, said the group would offer a comment for this report by the end of Tuesday (local time) but did not. Meta spokesman Corey Chambliss said in a statement on Wednesday the company appreciates 'the work of the Oversight Board' and welcomes its decisions. Clegg didn't respond to a request for comment. Even before Wednesday's ruling, the board's judgment on the gender identity cases had become a lightning rod among social media policy watchers, attracting scores of comments about how the group should rule, including from LGTBQ+ advocacy groups and conservative critics. The ruling could also affect how other internet platforms draw the line about what is considered acceptable speech amid a fierce global debate about the rights of trans people. 'This ruling tells LGBTQ people all we need to know about Meta's attitude towards its LGBTQ users - anti-LGBTQ hate, and especially anti-trans hate is welcome on Meta's platforms,' Sarah Kate Ellis, CEO of the LGBTQ+ activist group GLAAD, said in a statement. 'This is not 'free speech,' this is harassment that dehumanises a vulnerable group of people.' Critics argue that leaving the content up could open the door to more harmful rhetoric about trans people, at a time when the LGBTQ+ community is facing rising harassment and legislative efforts to limit trans people's ability to use bathrooms or compete in sports competitions in accordance with their gender identity. Meanwhile, conservative free-speech advocates argue that people should be allowed to criticise the rights of trans people - a position that polls show is gaining popularity among the general public in the United States. 'This isn't hate speech,' said Beth Parlato, a senior legal adviser for Independent Women's Law Centre, a conservative group that advocates for restrictions on trans people's participation in sports and their presence in bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity. 'More than half of the country believes there are two sexes - male and female - and we should not be quieted or censored from discussing any issues that involve transgenders,' she added. The Oversight Board is undergoing its own reinvention, five years after it launched as an experimental way for Meta to offload contentious content-moderation decisions to an independent party. Critics of the board, both inside and outside the company, have alleged that it has moved too slowly to issue decisions, failed to substantially change the company's approach to moderation, and operated at too hefty a price tag. Some have also characterised the Oversight Board as too liberal, applying pressure that incentivised the group to take up the gender identity cases in the first place, one of the people said. The 21-member Oversight Board, which is funded by the tech company but operates independently, includes a global roster of well-known public figures in media, politics, civil society and academia. Its members include former Danish prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, University of Notre Dame professor Paolo Carozza, Prospect magazine editor Alan Rusbridger, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Tawakkol Karman and Cato Institute Vice President John Samples. The Oversight Board reviewed a Facebook post that shared a video in which a woman films herself confronting a transgender woman for using the women's bathroom, according to the board's description of the case. The woman asked the trans woman why she was using the women's bathroom. The board is also reviewing an Instagram post sharing a video of a transgender girl winning a sports competition in the United States, with some spectators expressing disapproval of the result. The post refers to the trans athlete as a boy, according to the board. Both posts, which were shared last year, were reported by users as violating the company's hate speech and bullying and harassment policies. But Meta left the posts up, determining that the videos or posts didn't specifically call for the exclusion of trans people, according to one of the people and a description of the case from the Oversight Board. At least two of the users who originally reported the content appealed that decision to the board. Meta's old hate-speech or anti-harassment rules banned users from calling for the political, social or economic exclusion of people based on characteristics such as race, gender, or sexual orientation. Meta's new rules give users the freedom to say certain jobs, such as the military or teaching, should be limited by gender. Social media posters are also free under the new rules to say they support denying access to certain spaces on the basis of gender. Meta's rules never blocked users from 'misgendering' people, by using someone's non-preferred pronouns. Meta initially told the Oversight Board that the posts didn't break the rules but that even if they did, they would be considered exempt under the company's newsworthiness allowance. Later, Meta reviewed its new hate-speech rules with the Oversight Board, whose members took them into consideration for its ruling, two of the people said. Since the board took up the cases in August, activists on both sides of the issue have weighed in. GLAAD argued that the posts should be considered a violation of the company's hate-speech rules because misgendering someone is equivalent to 'denying [the] existence' of people based on a sensitive characteristic. By contrast, the Independent Women's Forum argued that allowing the contested videos to be posted is a crucial tool for women to be able to advocate against having trans women, whom they call men, use women-only spaces. For now, Meta is siding with the latter. Zuckerberg told podcaster Joe Rogan in January that one reason the company changed its rules is because then-defence secretary nominee Pete Hegseth's previous criticism of policies allowing women in combat would probably be debated in his confirmation hearing. 'If it's okay to say on the floor of Congress, you should probably be able to debate it on social media,' Zuckerberg said.
Boston Globe
23-04-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Videos disparaging trans women aren't hate speech, Meta board says
The Oversight Board sided with Meta early Wednesday and ruled that the two posts about trans people didn't violate the company's hate-speech rules. The board's decisions on specific cases are considered binding. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The ruling focuses on disparaging comments accompanying two videos, one showing a trans woman using a woman's bathroom and another showing a trans girl winning a female sports competition. The videos and posts responding to them circulated on social media last year. In both cases, Meta determined that while posts about the videos questioned a trans person's gender identity, they didn't violate its rules against hate speech or harassment. Advertisement Both posts came to the Oversight Board's attention after being reshared by conservative activist Chaya Raichik, who operates several controversial social media accounts known as Libs of TikTok, according to four people familiar with the matter. Raichik's social media accounts have become a fixture in American politics, and she has amassed an audience of millions while routinely attacking the cultural acceptance of trans people. Libs of TikTok has been blamed for sparking threats at hospitals and encouraging restrictions on LGBTQ+ -related content in schools. Raichik said the allegations about hospitals are false. Related : Advertisement The Oversight Board's ruling is the first major test of Meta's latest efforts to rebrand itself for a MAGA-dominated Washington. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg pledged in January to take the company back to its roots by 'restoring free expression' after years of what he said were too many restrictions on speech. That same month, Meta weakened its hate-speech rules, offering users greater freedom to call for gender-based restrictions in bathrooms, sports and specific schools, and to characterize gay people as mentally ill. The Oversight Board as a whole said the posts didn't violate Meta's new or old hate-speech rules because they did not directly attack people based on their gender identity. A minority on the board argued that the posts would have violated Meta's old hate-speech rules The board on Wednesday also issued a broader critique of Meta's latest policy changes, including calling on the social media giant to improve how it enforces violations of its bullying and harassment rules. The Oversight Board planned to release the gender identity case ruling, among several others, next week but moved up the announcement to early Wednesday after a Washington Post reporter requested comment this week on the pending ruling. Ayobami Olugbemiga, a spokesperson for the Oversight Board, said the group would offer a comment for this report by the end of the day Tuesday but did not. Advertisement Meta spokesman Corey Chambliss said in a statement Wednesday that the company appreciates 'the work of the Oversight Board' and welcomes its decisions. Clegg didn't respond to a request for comment. Even before Wednesday's ruling, the board's judgment on the gender identity cases had become a lightning rod among social media policy watchers, attracting scores of comments about how the group should rule, including from LGTBQ+ advocacy groups and conservative critics. The ruling could also affect how other internet platforms draw the line about what is considered acceptable speech amid a fierce global debate about the rights of trans people. Related : 'This ruling tells LGBTQ people all we need to know about Meta's attitude towards its LGBTQ users — anti-LGBTQ hate, and especially anti-trans hate is welcome on Meta's platforms,' Sarah Kate Ellis, CEO of Critics argue that leaving the content up could open the door to more harmful rhetoric about trans people, at a time when the LGBTQ+ community is facing rising harassment and legislative efforts to limit trans people's ability to use bathrooms or compete in sports competitions in accordance with their gender identity. Meanwhile, conservative free-speech advocates argue that people should be allowed to criticize the rights of trans people — a position that polls show is gaining popularity among the general public in the United States. 'This isn't hate speech,' said Beth Parlato, a senior legal adviser for Independent Women's Law Center, a conservative group that advocates for restrictions on trans people's participation in sports and their presence in bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity. Advertisement 'More than half of the country believes there are two sexes — male and female — and we should not be quieted or censored from discussing any issues that involve transgenders,' she added. The Oversight Board is undergoing its own reinvention, five years after it launched as an experimental way for Meta to off-load contentious content-moderation decisions to an independent party. Critics of the board, both inside and outside the company, have alleged that it has moved too slowly to issue decisions, failed to substantially change the company's approach to moderation, and operated at too hefty a price tag. Some have also characterized the Oversight Board as too liberal, applying pressure that incentivized the group to take up the gender identity cases in the first place, one of the people said. The 21-member Oversight Board, which is funded by the tech company but operates independently, includes a global roster of well-known public figures in media, politics, civil society and academia. Its members include former Danish prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, University of Notre Dame professor Paolo Carozza, Prospect magazine editor Alan Rusbridger, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Tawakkol Karman and Cato Institute Vice President John Samples. The Oversight Board reviewed a Facebook post that shared a video in which a woman films herself confronting a transgender woman for using the women's bathroom, according to the board's description of the case. The woman asked the trans woman why she was using the women's bathroom. The board is also reviewing an Instagram post sharing a video of a transgender girl winning a sports competition in the United States, with some spectators expressing disapproval of the result. The post refers to the trans athlete as a boy, according to the board. Related : Advertisement Both posts, which were shared last year, were reported by users as violating the company's hate speech and bullying and harassment policies. But Meta left the posts up, determining that the videos or posts didn't specifically call for the exclusion of trans people, according to one of the people and a description of the case from the Oversight Board. At least two of the users who originally reported the content appealed that decision to the board. Meta's old hate-speech or anti-harassment rules banned users from calling for the political, social or economic exclusion of people based on characteristics such as race, gender, or sexual orientation. Meta's new rules give users the freedom to say certain jobs, such as the military or teaching, should be limited by gender. Social media posters are also free under the new rules to say they support denying access to certain spaces on the basis of gender. Meta's rules never blocked users from 'misgendering' people, by using someone's non-preferred pronouns. Meta initially told the Oversight Board that the posts didn't break the rules but that even if they did, they would be considered exempt under the company's newsworthiness allowance. Later, Meta reviewed its new hate-speech rules with the Oversight Board, whose members took them into consideration for its ruling, two of the people said. Since the board took up the cases in August, activists on both sides of the issue have weighed in. GLAAD argued that the posts should be considered a violation of the company's hate-speech rules because misgendering someone is equivalent to 'denying [the] existence' of people based on a sensitive characteristic. By contrast, the Independent Women's Forum argued that allowing the contested videos to be posted is a crucial tool for women to be able to advocate against having trans women, whom they call men, use women-only spaces. Advertisement For now, Meta is siding with the latter. Zuckerberg told podcaster Joe Rogan in January that one reason the company changed its rules is because then-defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth's previous criticism of policies allowing women in combat would probably be debated in his confirmation hearing. 'If it's okay to say on the floor of Congress, you should probably be able to debate it on social media,' Zuckerberg said.
