Posts catalogued by GLAAD included calls for the violent extermination of transgender individuals in addition to descriptions of trans and gender nonconforming individuals as “satanic,” “sexual predators,” “terrorists,” “mentally unwell” and “perverts.” The report mentioned the posts are only a pattern of the rhetoric GLAAD’s social media security program displays every single day. GLAAD mentioned its efforts to persuade Meta to do extra to tamp down such posts have been unsuccessful.
Meta didn’t reply to requests for remark.
“For years, LGBTQ organizations have pleaded with Meta to enhance security for our communities, particularly for transgender individuals,” Sarah Kate Ellis, GLAAD’s president and CEO, mentioned in an announcement. “ … As LGBTQ individuals and different marginalized communities proceed to expertise real-world harms stemming from these anti-LGBTQ accounts with giant followings, we proceed to name for Meta to share a plan to tackle the epidemic of anti-trans hate and violence on its platforms.”
GLAAD mentioned Meta permitting this kind of anti-trans rhetoric to unfold on its platform contributes to offline threats and assaults on trans individuals. “Meta itself acknowledges in its public statements and in its personal policies that hate speech ‘creates an setting of intimidation and exclusion, and in some circumstances might promote offline violence,’” GLAAD mentioned in an announcement concerning the report. “Such acknowledgements of its personal culpability make Meta’s negligence and refusal to defend individuals from such hate … all of the extra stunning.”
GLAAD’s report comes as many LGBTQ content material creators say their attain is being restricted due to Meta’s new restrictions on political content material, which incorporates social points and LGBQT+ rights. Alok Vaid-Menon, a nonbinary content material creator, creator and comic in New York who’s on GLAAD’s social media security program advisory committee, mentioned: “I’ve skilled an uptick of ant- trans harassment, slurs, dehumanizing tropes and violent threats. I introduced this up to Meta loads of occasions, and the response that we’re all the time given is, you understand, you may block these people.”
“There’s a failure to acknowledge that it is a systemic downside,” Vaid-Menon added. “The onus is put on particular person customers to block slightly than on the perpetrators of this violence who’re immediately violating Meta’s personal preexisting policies.”
In September, Facebook’s Oversight Board, which acts as Meta’s ombudsman, lambasted the corporate’s failure to enforce guidelines against anti-trans hate and threats. In a ruling on an incident referred to as “Post in Polish Targeting Trans People,” the board wrote that “the basic subject on this case shouldn’t be with the policies, however their enforcement. Meta’s repeated failure to take the right enforcement motion, regardless of a number of indicators concerning the publish’s dangerous content material, leads the Board to conclude the corporate shouldn’t be residing up to the beliefs it has articulated on LGBTQIA+ security.”
In a February assertion, Meta acknowledged that its displays had made a mistake in not taking enforcement motion on the publish. “Upon preliminary evaluation, Meta left this content material up. However, upon additional evaluation, we decided the content material did actually violate our coverage on Hate Speech, as specified by the Facebook Community Standards, and was left up in error. We due to this fact eliminated the content material,” the corporate mentioned.
And in June, GLAAD, the LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign, and greater than 250 LGBTQ+ celebrities, public figures and allies signed an open letter calling on Meta to do a greater job of defending against anti-trans hate. The letter mentioned false narratives about trans individuals being “groomers” and sexual predators had been main to escalating harassment of distinguished trans and nonbinary figures on Instagram. Celebrities together with Elliot Page, Laverne Cox, Jamie Lee Curtis, Shawn Mendes, Janelle Monáe, Gabrielle Union, Judd Apatow and Ariana Grande signed the letter.
GLAAD mentioned that 9 months later, the corporate nonetheless hasn’t taken enough motion to curb the abuse. All posts that GLAAD representatives reported to Meta by means of its customary reporting instruments had been discovered both not violative or no motion was taken on them.
In one Instagram publish cited within the report, a trans individual’s physique is proven twisted on the bottom whereas being crushed to demise with stones, which have been changed with the laughing emoji. The caption reads: “[trans flag] individuals are devils.”
The report additionally cited an hour-long video posted by a far-right group referred to as Media Research Center with 1.7 million followers. In the video, Brittany Hughes, the host of the “Brittany Hughes Show” podcast, which has 3.2 million followers on Facebook, describes trans individuals as pedophiles “grooming kids.”
Right-wing media retailers and podcasters — together with Matt Walsh, the account Gays Against Groomers, Chaya Raichik’s Libs of TikTok and the Babylon Bee — contributed to anti-trans hate, in accordance to the report.
GLAAD mentioned it hopes the report attracts Meta’s consideration to its inadequate enforcement of the corporate’s policies.
