Social Media Safety Program

GLAAD’s Social Media Safety program is working every day to hold tech companies and social media platforms accountable, and to secure safe online spaces for LGBTQ people.

Read the full 2024 Social Media Safety Index & Platform Scorecard report here or via the embedded PDF below.

The annual GLAAD Social Media Safety Index (SMSI) & Platform Scorecard provides recommendations for the industry and evaluates the six major platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X/Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok with a focus on LGBTQ safety, privacy, and expression. After reviewing the platforms on 12 LGBTQ-specific indicators, these are the scores for the 2024 Platform Scorecard:

TikTok: 67% (D+)
Facebook: 58% (F)
Instagram: 58% (F)
YouTube: 58% (F)
Threads: 51% (F)
Twitter: 41% (F)

Links & Resources

Key findings in the 2024 SMSI include:

Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric on social media translates to real-world offline harms.
Anti-LGBTQ hate speech and disinformation continues to be an alarming public health and safety issue.
Platforms are largely failing to mitigate this dangerous hate and disinformation and inadequately enforce their own policies.
Platforms disproportionately suppress LGBTQ content, including via removal, demonetization, and shadowbanning.
There is a lack of effective, meaningful transparency reporting from the platforms.

Select Core Recommendations:

Strengthen and enforce existing policies that protect LGBTQ people and others from hate, harassment, and disinformation, and also from suppression of legitimate LGBTQ expression.
Train moderators on the needs of LGBTQ users, and moderate across all languages, cultural contexts, and regions.
Be transparent with regard to content moderation, terms of service policy implementation, algorithm designs, and enforcement reports.
Stop violating privacy/respect data privacy. Platforms should reduce the amount of data they collect and retain, and cease the practice of targeted surveillance advertising, including the use of powerful algorithms to recommend content.
Promote civil discourse and proactively message expectations for user behavior (including respecting platform hate and harassment policies).

About the GLAAD Social Media Safety Program

As the leading national LGBTQ media advocacy organization GLAAD is working every day to hold tech companies and social media platforms accountable, and to secure safe online spaces for LGBTQ people. The GLAAD Social Media Safety (SMS) program researches, monitors, and reports on a variety of issues facing LGBTQ social media users — with a focus on safety, privacy, and expression. The SMS program has consulted directly with platforms and tech companies on some of the most significant LGBTQ policy and product developments over the years. In addition to ongoing advocacy work with platforms (including TikTok, X/Twitter, YouTube, and Meta’s Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and others), and issuing the highly-respected annual Social Media Safety Index (SMSI) report, the SMS program produces resources, guides, publications, and campaigns, and actively works to educate the general public and raise awareness in the media about LGBTQ social media safety issues, especially anti-LGBTQ hate and disinformation.