MENLO PARK (AP) — It wasn’t just fact-checking that Meta scrapped from its platforms as it prepares for the second Trump administration. The social media giant has also loosened its rules around hate speech and abuse — again following the lead of Elon Musk’s X — specifically when it comes to sexual orientation and gender identity as well as immigration status.

The changes are worrying advocates for vulnerable groups, who say Meta’s decision to scale back content moderation could lead to real-word harms. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Tuesday that the company will “remove restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are out of touch with mainstream discourse,” citing “recent elections” as a catalyst.

For instance, Meta has added the following to its rules — called community standards — that users are asked to abide by:

“We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like ‘weird.’” In other words, it is now permitted to call gay people mentally ill on Facebook, Threads and Instagram. Other slurs and what Meta calls “harmful stereotypes historically linked to intimidation” — such as Blackface and Holocaust denial — are still prohibited.

The Menlo Park, California-based company also removed a sentence from its “policy rationale” explaining why it bans certain hateful conduct. The now-deleted sentence said that hate speech “creates an environment of intimidation and exclusion, and in some cases may promote offline violence.”

“The policy change is a tactic to earn favor with the incoming administration while also reducing business costs related to content moderation,” said Ben Leiner, a lecturer at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business who studies political and technology trends. “This decision will lead to real-world harm, not only in the United States where there has been an uptick in hate speech and disinformation on social media platforms, but also abroad where disinformation on Facebook has accelerated ethnic conflict in places like Myanmar.”

Meta, in fact, acknowledged in 2018 that it didn’t do enough to prevent its platform from being used to “incite offline violence” in Myanmar, fueling communal hatred and violence against the country’s Muslim Rohingya minority.

Arturo Béjar, a former engineering director at Meta known for his expertise on curbing online harassment, said while most of the attention has gone to the company’s fact-checking announcement Tuesday, he is more worried about the changes to Meta’s harmful content policies.

That’s because instead of proactively enforcing rules against things like self-harm, bullying and harassment, Meta will now rely on user reports before it takes any action. The company said it plans to focus its automated systems on “tackling illegal and high-severity violations, like terrorism, child sexual exploitation, drugs, fraud and scams.”

Béjar said that’s even though “Meta knows that by the time a report is submitted and reviewed the content will have done most of its harm.”

“I shudder to think what these changes will mean for our youth, Meta is abdicating their responsibility to safety, and we won’t know the impact of these changes because Meta refuses to be transparent about the harms teenagers experience, and they go to extraordinary lengths to dilute or stop legislation that could help,” he said.

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. regulators have opened an investigation into 2.6 million Teslas after reports of crashes involving the use of company technology that allows drivers to remotely command their vehicle to return to them, or move to another location, using a phone app.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also said Tuesday that Tesla did not report any of the accidents. Tesla is under order to report crashes on “publicly accessible roads” involving vehicles being operated through its autonomous driving technology.

The new investigation follows another probe launched in October looking into the company’s “Full Self-Driving” system after getting reports of crashes in low-visibility conditions, including one that killed a pedestrian. That investigation covers 2.4 million Teslas from the 2016 through 2024 model years.

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press on Tuesday.

One driver filed a complaint after a crash while using Tesla’s “Actually Smart Summon” technology and NHTSA is looking into another three similar incidents based on media reports, the NHTSA said. The agency is looking into 12 total incidents reported by users of the technology.

Each of the vehicles failed to detect posts and other parked vehicles, according to the NHTSA.

Regulators say the vehicles struck objects because the users had “too little reaction time to avoid a crash, either with the available line of sight or releasing the phone app button, which stops the vehicle’s movement.”

Shares of Tesla Inc., based in Austin, Texas, slid more than 4% in late afternoon trading Tuesday.

Musk has complained that U.S. regulations are too onerous and are holding back the development of self-driving cars. Ethics experts are worried that once President-elect Donald Trump takes office, Musk will push him to ease oversight of Tesla, which just suffered its first decline in annual sales in more than a decade.

Musk donated an estimated $250 million to Trump’s presidential campaign and is a frequent guest at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, vetting cabinet nominees and meeting with foreign heads of state. Trump has put Musk in charge of an advisory group, the Department of Government Efficiency, that will recommend where to cut government expenses and staff at federal agencies and reduce regulation.

The NHTSA said Tuesday it will look into the top speed that Teslas can reach when users deploy its “summons” technology, as well as restrictions on public roads and line of sights requirements. It also said it expects to check for any “connectivity delays” with the app that could result in increased stopping distance.

Tesla’s Model 3 owner’s manual says that its “summons” feature is designed for use only in parking lots and driveways on private property and is disabled on public roads.

The new probe covers 2016-2025 Model S and X vehicles, 2017-2025 Model 3, 2020-2025 Model Y equipped with Tesla’s Full Self-Driving driver assistance system.