Threats Against Politicians Quadrupled After Meta Changed Speech Rules: Report

Threats against U.S. politicians, including President Donald Trump, surged on Facebook after Meta made the controversial decision to loosen its speech rules in January 2025, according to a new report.

WIRED released a report based on research by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), adding new scrutiny to Meta’s January 2025 decision to scale back some content moderation practices, end its third-party fact-checking program in the United States, and focus enforcement on what the company described as “illegal and high-severity violations.”

The company said at the time that it wanted to allow more speech and reduce enforcement mistakes. According to WIRED, CCDH researchers analyzed nearly 8 million Facebook comments posted under content from 100 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, split evenly between the 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats with the largest Facebook followings.

The researchers compared comments from the six months before Meta’s policy shift with comments from the six months after. The results were stark. Comments that appeared to violate Meta’s rules on violent threats rose from 1,800 to 7,600, according to the report.

Hate speech comments increased from 6,900 to 30,000, while comments classified as bullying and harassment rose from 15,700 to 39,900. The outlet reported that abusive and racist comments targeting lawmakers from both parties tripled overall, while violent threats and hate speech quadrupled.

Threats against Trump more than doubled during the same period, according to the CCDH analysis cited by WIRED. The report said the abuse included gendered and racist attacks against lawmakers, including Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas and Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida. WIRED reported that some of the comments it reviewed remained online until shortly before publication, when several examples were deleted from Facebook.

Meta disputed the broader implications of the findings. A company spokesperson told WIRED that Meta regularly publishes “reports tracking violating content on our platforms, and the prevalence of hateful conduct did not increase throughout 2025.” The spokesperson also said the company could not respond directly to the CCDH report without reviewing the full research.

Meta’s policy shift was announced by Joel Kaplan, the company’s chief global affairs officer, who said in January 2025 that Meta had been “over-enforcing” its rules and limiting legitimate political debate. The company said it would lift restrictions on some topics, rely more heavily on user reports for lower-severity violations, and move away from proactive enforcement in some areas.

The report also follows previous CCDH research that found Instagram failed to remove most abusive comments targeting women politicians. Reuters reported in 2024 that CCDH had flagged more than 20,000 toxic comments on Instagram posts by women politicians, including sexist, racist, and violent language, and found that Instagram left up 93% of the harmful comments it reviewed.