GLAAD’S SOCIAL MEDIA SAFETY INDEX UNVEILS HOW TECH COMPANIES INTENTIONALLY ROLLED BACK SAFETY POLICIES FOR LGBTQ PEOPLE

Advocates alarmed at critically low ratings for all platforms; YouTube removes “gender identity” from hate speech policy and Meta now allows anti-LGBTQ slurs and harassment

May 13, 2025 – GLAAD, the world’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) media advocacy organization announced the findings of its fifth annual Social Media Safety Index (SMSI), an annual report on LGBTQ safety, privacy, and expression.

Read the full report here.

The in-depth report analyzes six major social media platforms — TikTok, YouTube, X, and Meta’s Facebook, Instagram, and Threads — across 14 indicators, which address a range of issues affecting LGBTQ people online, including data privacy, moderation transparency, training of content moderators, and workforce diversity. The report found that recent, unprecedented hate speech policy rollbacks from Meta and YouTube are actively undermining the safety of LGBTQ people and other historically marginalized groups, both online and offline. Alarming 2025 platform policy changes include YouTube’s removal of gender identity as a protected characteristic in its hate speech policy, and Meta’s wide-ranging rollbacks including new exceptions expressly allowing hate speech, such as stating that LGBTQ people are “abnormal” and “mentally ill.”

The quantitative methodology of GLAAD’s Platform Scorecard was created in partnership with Ranking Digital Rights (RDR) and research consultant Andrea Hackl. This year, GLAAD introduced a new scoring methodology that generated numeric ratings for each platform with regard to LGBTQ safety, privacy, and expression. The Platform Scorecard focuses on the existence of policies, and does not measure the enforcement of those policies. The 2025 scores are not directly comparable to the 2024 scores due to extensive revising of the Scorecard methodology.

Out of a possible 100, the platforms received the following scores:

• TikTok: 56/100
• Facebook: 45/100
• Instagram: 45/100
• YouTube: 41/100
• Threads: 40/100
• X: 30/100

All companies are failing to meet basic standards across most safety metrics on the SMSI scorecard.

The Social Media Safety Index also includes specific findings and recommendations for each company, and calls on companies to urgently and tangibly prioritize LGBTQ safety. The report also highlights the volume of online anti-trans hate, harassment, and disinformation that has skyrocketed in the past year, a trend that GLAAD has qualitatively examined in the SMSI report.

Coinciding with these rollbacks in LGBTQ hate speech protections, GLAAD’s Anti-LGBTQ Extremism Reporting Tracker has shown a distinct upwards trend in offline anti-LGBTQ incidents in recent years. These include both criminal and non-criminal instances of harassment, vandalism, and assault motivated by anti-LGBTQ hate.

From GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis:
“At a time when real-world violence and harassment against LGBTQ people is on the rise, social media companies are profiting from the flames of anti-LGBTQ hate instead of ensuring the basic safety of LGBTQ users. These low scores should terrify anyone who cares about creating safer, more inclusive online spaces.”

GLAAD’s SMSI Platform Scorecard draws on RDR’s standard methodology to produce numeric ratings for each platform with regard to LGBTQ safety. This year, GLAAD added elements addressing emerging threats to LGBTQ people online as well as an indicator regarding content that promotes so-called “conversion therapy,” a practice that has been banned in 23 states and condemned by all major medical, psychiatric, and psychological organizations.

As mentioned, the SMSI Scorecard also does not quantify the enforcement of policies, due to larger issues with platform transparency. GLAAD and other monitoring organizations repeatedly encounter failures in enforcement of a company’s own guidelines for content moderation, including hate speech and harassment policies.

Specific LGBTQ safety, privacy, and expression issues identified in the SMSI include: Inadequate content moderation and problems with policy development and enforcement (including failure to mitigate anti-LGBTQ content and over-moderation of LGBTQ users); harmful algorithms and lack of algorithmic transparency; inadequate transparency and user controls around data privacy; an overall lack of transparency and accountability across the industry, among many other issues — all of which disproportionately impact LGBTQ people and other marginalized communities who are uniquely vulnerable to hate, harassment, and discrimination.

This year’s report continues to make note of high-follower anti-LGBTQ hate accounts and right-wing figures who manufacture and circulate dangerous lies about LGBTQ people — which major platforms incentivize through visibility and monetization.

Key Findings of the 2025 SMSI include:

• Recent hate speech policy rollbacks from Meta and YouTube present grave threats to safety and are harmful to LGBTQ people on these platforms.
• Platforms are largely failing to mitigate harmful anti-LGBTQ hate and disinformation that violates their own policies.
• Platforms disproportionately suppress LGBTQ content, via removal, demonetization, and forms of shadowbanning.
• Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and disinformation on social media has been shown to lead to offline harms.
• Social media companies continue to withhold meaningful transparency about content moderation, algorithms, data protection, and data privacy practices.

GLAAD’s Key Recommendations:

• Strengthen and enforce (or restore) existing policies and mitigations that protect LGBTQ people and others from hate, harassment, and misinformation; while also reducing suppression of legitimate LGBTQ expression.
• Improve moderation by providing mandatory training for all content moderators (including those employed by contractors) focused on LGBTQ safety, privacy, and expression; and moderate across all languages, cultural contexts, and regions. AI systems should be used to flag for human review, not for automated removals.
• Work with independent researchers to provide meaningful transparency about content moderation, community guidelines, development and use of AI and algorithms, and enforcement reports.
• Respect data privacy. Platforms should reduce the amount of data they collect, infer, and retain, and cease the practice of targeted surveillance advertising, including the use of algorithmic content recommender systems, and other incursions on user privacy.
• Promote and incentivize civil discourse including working with creators and proactively messaging expectations for user behavior, such as respecting platform hate and harassment policies.

From GLAAD’s Senior Director of Social Media Safety Jenni Olson:
“We need to hold the line — as tech companies are taking unprecedented leaps backwards, we remain firm in advocating for basic best practices that protect the safety of LGBTQ people on these platforms. This is not normal. Our communities deserve to live in a world that does not generate or profit off of hate.”

Read the full report here.

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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 Program produces the highly-respected annual Social Media Safety Index (SMSI) and researches, monitors, and reports on a variety of issues facing LGBTQ social media users — with a focus on safety, privacy, and expression.

About GLAAD’s SMSI Advisory Committee
Providing expert guidance, the SMSI advisory committee includes respected leaders working at the intersections of tech accountability and LGBTQ rights. Committee members include: ALOK, writer and performer; Lucy Bernholz, Ph.D, Founding Co-Director, Stanford Digital Civil Society Lab; Alejandra Caraballo, Esq., Clinical Instructor, Cyberlaw Clinic, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School; Joan Donovan, Ph.D, Founder, Critical Internet Studies Institute and Assistant Professor of Journalism and Emerging Media Studies, Boston University; Jelani Drew-Davi, Senior Communications Specialist, Kairos; Liz Fong-Jones, Field CTO, Honeycomb; Evan Greer, Director, Fight for the Future; Leigh Honeywell, Lead Security Strategist, 1Password; Maria Ressa, Journalist, Co-founder, and CEO, Rappler; Tom Rielly, Founder, TED Fellows Program and Founder, PlanetOut.com; Sarah T. Roberts, Ph.D, Faculty Director, UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry and Associate Professor, Gender Studies at UCLA; Brennan Suen, Deputy Director of External Affairs, Media Matters for America; Kara Swisher, Renowned journalist and Editor-at-Large, New York Magazine; and Marlena Wisniak, Senior Legal Manager, AI and Human Rights, European Center for Not-for-Profit Law.

The 2025 Social Media Safety Index was created with support from Craig Newmark Philanthropies and Logitech.